
<the 

PLAYWATER 

PLOT 









MARY T. WAGGAMAN 




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THE PLAYWATER PLOT. 


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In a moment the Colonel went sprawling to the floor under a mighty 
blow from old Seth's knotty fist."—Page 182. 
















THE 


PLAYWATER PLOT 


MARY T. WAGGAMAN, 

Anther of Toni's Luck Pot^' '‘'‘Nan Nobody^' sic. 



New York, Cincinnati, Chicago : 
BKN2^IGKR BROXHKRS, 
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See, 

1903. 




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THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAR 19 1903 

Copyright Entry 

/WiTL./1-H 0 3 
CLASS XXc. No. 

^ 5 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1903, by Benziger Brothers. 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTEJ? I. 

PAGE 

Doctor Dick. 7 

CHAPTER II. 

Playwater Farm. 19 

CHAPTER III. 

Old St. Bride’s. 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

Making Friends. 44 

CHAPTER V. 

Fluff’s Find. . 56 

CHAPTER VI. 

At Runner’s. 71 

5 









6 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

A June Morning. 85 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Brother Barry’s Story. 98 

CHAPTER IX. 

A Waking Up. 114 

CHAPTER X. 

Sunset Shadows. 128 

CHAPTER XL 

Dave’s Adventure. 136 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Plotters. 144 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The “Excursion”. 160 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Trappers Trapped. 175 










THE PLAYWATER PLOT. 


CHAPTER I. 

DOCTOR DICK. 

‘‘Hold her head back, Ted. Steady with 
that foot, Pat, while I put on the splint.” 

“Oh, you are hurting her, Dick.” 

‘‘No, I am not; or if I am, this leg has to 
be set, hurt or no hurt. Stop crying, Pat. A 
nice sort of doctor’s nurse you would make! ” 
‘‘Oh, kitty, my poor kitty! Oh, couldn’t 
you give her chloroform, Dick ? ” 

“No, I couldn’t,” was the sternly profes¬ 
sional reply. “And if I could I wouldn’t, 
Pat; she is too yoimg.” 

It was a delicate surgical operation that 
was being performed at the comer of the old 
stone fence, this Jtme morning. The surgeon, 

7 



8 


DOCTOR DICK. 


with his torn hat thrust back on his curly head, 
was skilfully at work; while his brother, aged 
twelve, held the rebellious patient, and a 
pretty, fair-haired little girl looked tearfully 
on. 

So absorbed were all three in the momen¬ 
tous business that they did not hear the ap¬ 
proach of wheels on the grass-grown lane, and 
the occupant of a roomy, shabby old buggy 
drew up his horse, and sat surveying the group 
unobserved, a half-amused, half-tender smile 
lighting his rugged face. “Hallo!” he cried 
at last. “You have a patient, I see, this morn¬ 
ing, Doctor Dick. Any professional assistance 
needed ? ” 

“Oh, good morning. Doctor Deane,” said 
the young operator in a relieved tone. “ I 
wish you would look at her and see. It’s 
Pat’s white kitten, who put her leg into a 
rat-trap last night.” 

“And she is nearly killed,” sobbed Pat. 

“Not a bit of it,” said Doctor Deane, sur¬ 
veying the squirming, mewing patient. “ I 
could not have bound up a leg better myself; 
in fact I don’t know that I could have done it 
quite as well.” 


DOCTOR DICK. 


9 


“Oh, but she will be lame all her life—my 
poor, pretty kitty!” wailed Pat inconsolably. 

“ Lame? ” repeated the Doctor, with a twinkle 
in his eye. “What sort of surgeons do you 
take us for. Miss Pat ? Lame ? No indeed. 
Keep her quiet, if you can, for a day or two, 
and she will be as lively a kitten as ever jumped 
at a canary. If she isn’t, well, I think there 
are six spick-span new ones just opening their 
eyes in my stable-loft, and you can have them 
all.” 

“I don’t want them,” was the doleful reply 
to this liberal offer. “ I don’t want any kitten 
but my own dear little Fluff. Give her to me, 
Dick. Oh, she is trembling all over, and no 
wonder. I will hold her all day in my arms, 
and if—if she is lame. I’ll love her just the 
same, and more.” 

And Pat cuddled her downy darling close 
to her loyal little woman heart. 

“I was just driving out to your place, Dick; 
but as it is half a mile off my road this morning 
and I am in a hurry, you can take a message 
to Aimt Beth for me. Tell her I say Mrs. 
Leonard has decided to come out with her 
boy, so they will be at Playwater to-morrow 


10 


DOCTOR DICK. 


evening, about six. And between us, Dick,” 
added the speaker, nodding, “if we don’t get 
that young chap up on his legs, we are not the 
doctors we ought to be.” 

“What is the matter with him?” asked 
Dick with professional interest. 

“No one seems able to say,” answered the 
old doctor; “so that is for clever fellows like 
you and me to find out. From all I can learn, 
he was bom rich and rickety—an unlucky 
combination, Dick.” 

“Rickety means soft-boned, doesn’t it?” 
asked Dick. 

“Well, sometimes,” answered the old doc¬ 
tor grimly, “and sometimes it only means 
soft-brained, Dick. But in either case I have 
an idea Pla5rwater is the place for him. So 
he is coming to-morrow. My compliments 
to Miss Beth, and tell her she may get things 
ready for her boarders. Good-by, boys, and 
Miss Patty, remember, in case you want to 
increase your family cares, there are six gray 
kittens in my stable-loft ready for adoption.” 

“I don’t want them,” said Patty, content¬ 
edly stroking Fluff’s nose; “I don’t want any 
kitty but my own, even if her leg is lame. I’ll 


DOCTOR DICK, 


II 


keep her on a cushion all day, and feed her on 
cream, and catch mice for her in a trap—my 
own dear, pretty Fluffy! ” 

“Another case of soft bones for us, Dick,” 
laughed the doctor. “Between Mrs. Leonard 
and Miss Pat, we are likely to have our hands 
full. But kittens won’t stand it when boys 
must. To-morrow evening at six, remember, 
look out for us.” And nodding pleasantly 
again to the trio, the old doctor drove off, his 
buggy jolting and swinging over the grass- 
grown ruts of the dim shaded lane. 

“ It will be a nice little plum in Miss Wade’s 
pocket in any case,” the good doctor solilo¬ 
quized, “and money is sadly needed at Play- 
water, as any one with half an eye can see. 
The good aunts are doing their best for poor 
Dick Wade’s yoimgsters, but it is going to be 
a hard pull to give them the chance they ought 
to have. George! how that boy brought his 
father back to me this morning!” There was 
just the same steady, resolute light in his blue 
eyes that shone in poor old Dick’s when he 
bent over a patient. What a surgeon that 
man would have made if he had only lived 
ten years longer! And that youngster has it 


DOCTOR DICK. 


12 

in him too, I can see. It would be a burning 
shame to have him spend his life planting 
com and potatoes. Why haven’t I a few 
thousands to spend in the education of a boy 
like that? ” continued the good doctor in stem 
self-arraignment. 

And the summer breeze might have whis¬ 
pered in reply, Because most of the good doc¬ 
tor’s bills were only paid in prayers and bless¬ 
ings from grateful hearts that cannot be 
coimted in earthly numerals. 

Meantime there was eager discussion beside 
the rose-wreathed stone fence. 

“Who is coming to Playwater, Dick?” 
asked Pat. 

“What is he coming for?” queried Ted 
rather indignantly. 

“ It’s—it’s—^boarders,” answered Dick, gulp¬ 
ing a little over the unwelcome word. “ I 
heard Atmt Beth and Aunt Leigh talking 
about it. You see, we’re pretty poor, and the 
porch is beginning to break down, and the 
kitchen roof leaks, and there are no ploughs 
or harrows to work the farm. People have 
been telling Aunt Beth that with a spring like 
ours, and such butter and cream, she ought to 


DOCTOR DICK. 


13 


fill the house with summer boarders; but Aunt 
Leigh said she’d starve first. So we couldn’t 
think of it until the other day, when Doctor 
Deane came out with a fine lady who has a 
sick little boy, and they talked to Aunt Beth 
and Aunt Leigh for a long time; and when they 
went away Aunt Leigh cried, and said she sup¬ 
posed that she would have to give in, though 
she knew that it would make every Wade in 
the old burying-ground rise from his grave to 
have Pla3rwater turned into a tavern. So that 
is what Doctor Deane means,” concluded 
Dick. ‘!The boarders are coming, and we 
must hurry home to tell Aunt Beth.” 

And the trio hurried off over the broad 
imtilled fields, nodding with daisies and fringed 
with thickets of wild roses, until they came in 
sight of a wide-winged old house, shabby and 
weather-beaten despite the sheltering oaks 
that had stretched their protecting boughs 
above it for fully a hundred years. A rough 
carriage-road wound its way up the steep hill 
to the stone-pillared gate, but the children had 
taken a shorter path that clambered through 
brier and tangle, up the rocks wet with the 
spray of a little streamlet that came leaping 


14 


DOCTOR DICK. 


in a succession of miniature cascades down 
the bank. It was the merriest and maddest 
of little streams, tumbling over the rocks as if 
wild with glee, while a few yards beyond were 
another, and still another, all dancing and 
foaming and filling the air with blithe, rippling 
music, as they frolicked off to the green valley 
below. Little Patty, with Fluff purring con¬ 
tentedly on her breast, stopped in breathless 
delight. 

“Oh, Dick! Why—why—the waters are 
all playing to-day.” 

“Yes,” answered Dick, “they have all 
broken out together. It’s the first time for 
years. Generally there is only one wide awake; 
the other two just trickle sleepily. But this 
year all our springs are full head. Uncle Pete 
says it means some sort of luck, but whether 
it is good or bad he can’t say.” 

“Oh, it is good, I am sure,” chirped Pat. 
“The waters wouldn’t play for bad luck, Dick. 
Just listen to them. I never heard them make 
such music before. ’ ’ 

“Nor I,” answered Dick. “And old Sweet, 
that has been almost dry for five years, is 
ahead of them all, bubbling to the brim. 


DOCTOR DICK. 


15 


Such a fuss as they all keep up at night when 
everything is quiet! Aunt Leigh says it makes 
her so nervous she can’t sleep. But I like it; 
don’t you, Ted?” 

Ted, who was a round, rosy echo of his older 
brother, nodded affirmatively. 

“Oh, I like it too,” said Pat eagerly. “I 
just love it. Let us sit down and listen to 
them awhile, Dick, before we go up to the 
house. Oh, I am afraid mamma won’t let me 
come over to Playivater so often now if you 
are going to have boarders. Oh, I wish I had 
been born a boy, like you, Dick. It’s awful 
dull to be a girl.” 

“Don’t bother about that, Pat,” said Dick 
cheerily. “We’ll look out for you—won’t we, 
Ted?—and give you just as much fim as we 
have. You can put on your old sailor suit and 
run as wild as you please over here. But come 
on to the house now, for we must give Doctor 
Deane’s message to Aunt Beth.” And the 
three scrambled on up the rocks, amid the 
spray and splash of the leaping waters, until 
they reached the top of the hill, where the old 
house stood in a sweet, wild tangle of vines and 
rose-bushes, its Playing Waters, as htmdreds 


DOCTOR DICK. 


i6 

of years ago the Indians had called the triple 
spring, bubbling up amid the broken arches 
that once had prisoned them, and dancing 
off in joyous freedom on their own wild way. 
More than two hundred years ago Dick's 
sturdy ancestor, Laurence Wade, with greater 
wisdom than many of his contemporaries, had 
pressed back into the wilderness a couple of 
miles, to avoid the miasma that rose from the 
river shore. In his search for a healthful home 
to which to bring his fair young English wife, 
he had foimd a few old Indians, too feeble 
to follow the march of their tribe, lingering 
around these forest springs. Wonderful were 
the legends they told of the healing, life-giving 
waters; and, charmed with the beauty of the 
site, the yotmg man had purchased the ground 
and built the old mansion that was to be the 
home of his race for generations. He was 
rich, hospitable, generous, and soon the wilder¬ 
ness bloomed into order and beauty around; 
the “Playing Waters” of the Indians rose in 
sparkling jets from carved granite basins; the 
great house was thronged with guests through 
all the glad summer, and often until the forests 
blazed under the first touch of the frost. 


DOCTOR DICK. 


17 


But as the years went by this smiling fortune 
changed. Loss followed loss; war, poverty, 
sorrow, death darkened the happy homestead. 
Its last master. Doctor Richard Wade, a young 
physician whose brilliant opening career in a 
neighboring city had promised a future of 
name and fame, had died at thirty, leaving his 
young wife and her baby boys penniless, save 
for their share in the old mountain home, where 
his two maiden sisters still lived, drawing from 
the half-tilled fields and failing orchards the 
meagre income necessary for their simple wants. 

So hither the broken-hearted young widow 
had come, only to lay down the weary burden 
of her crushed life within a short year, and 
leave three-year-old Dick and Baby Ted to 
the care of the two old aunts, who had served 
and slaved and stinted for them ever since, 
while the great house grew shabbier, and the 
fields wilder, and the playing waters broke 
rebelliously from their crumbling botmds and 
danced away down the hill. 

Thus things stood on this bright Jtme day, 
when, taking a short cut through the cabbage- 
patch, Doctor Deane’s yoimg messengers burst 
tmceremoniously into the wide, spotless kitchep, 


i8 


DOCTOR DICK. 


where a plump, comfortable, little old lady sat 
capping strawberries. 

“They are coming. Aunt Beth. Doctor 
Deane says get the rooms ready. The board¬ 
ers will be here to-morrow evening at six/’ 


CHAPTER II. 

PLAYWATER FARM. 

“God bless me!” twittered Aunt Beth, 
nearly dropping a pan brimming with ripe red 
berries. “What a start you gave me, boys!” 
Aimt Beth was roimd and rosy as a winter 
apple, with soft white hair, that would ripple 
in spite of all her efforts to smooth it prim and 
straight, and eyes bright as those of the robin 
chirping amid the snow. 

It was a dark, cold day indeed when Aimt 
Beth could not chirp and twitter and find a 
cheery side to things with those bright old bird 
eyes that neither tears nor time had been able 
to dim. She wore a plain gingham dress, a 
trifie short in the skirt, and with no nonsense 
or furbelows about it. But the whitest of soft 
handkerchiefs was pinned about her still pretty 
throat, and her apron was always like the 
driven snow. 


19 


20 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


And the work those plump little hands of 
Aunt Beth’s could do. They were old-fash¬ 
ioned hands, it is true; soft and white and pink- 
tipped as they were, they had never known 
the touch of a modem manicure. They could 
not rim a typewriter or an electric carpet- 
sweeper or a clothes-wringer; indeed, though 
it was rather a matter of shame to Aunt Beth, 
they had never been able to master the mys¬ 
teries of the handsome sewing-machine which 
her brother had sent her some twenty years 
before, and which had served chiefly as an orna¬ 
mental cabinet for the parlor ever since. But 
what machine could tuck and fell and gather 
and stroke better than Aunt Beth’s fairy fin¬ 
gers? What patent carpet-sweeper could leave 
a room so spotless and dainty? What Chinese 
laundry could produce such laces and ruffles 
as old Chloe, working under Aunt Beth’s eyes, 
sent up every week to be packed away in 
great presses fragrant with dried roses and 
lavender? 

The roof might leak and the porch totter, 
but not a spider dared swing a web in the old 
house from garret to cellar, not a shadow 
dimmed the cracked window-panes, not a 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


21 


Speck of dust marred the shining polish of the 
old mahogany furniture. And such rugs as 
Aunt Beth could weave, such lace as she could 
knit, such bread and butter, and pickles and 
preserves, and pie and cake as she could make, 
such peach cordial and blackberry wine and 
raspberry vinegar and elder-flower water as 
she could brew! Ah, there was no end to the 
accomplishments of the dear, plump, little old 
lady who turned her bright eyes on Dick and 
Ted this morning and repeated: “The board¬ 
ers 1 Bless us, and not a thing ready for them I 
Leigh, dear”—to a tall, slender old lady who 
just then swept slowly in from the dining¬ 
room—“Doctor Deane says Mrs. Leonard 
and her boy are coming to-morrow evening.” 

Aunt Leigh sank into the kitchen rocker 
with a sigh. She was a very stately old lady 
indeed, with white buckle curls, on each side 
of her delicate, handsome face, which had still 
the faint bloom of a faded rose. She wore an 
old-fashioned lavender muslin, with frills of 
lace about the neck and wrists, and a little lace 
cap in her snowy curls. For Aunt Leigh could 
not forget that forty years ago she had been 
the belle of the county, and still climg pa- 


22 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


thetically to the shadow of that long-lost 
crown. 

“It is hard on you, I know, dear,” said 
Aunt Beth sympathetically. “ But really, you 
know, the roof will be down in another year if 
something is not done, and Uncle Pete can 
scarcely totter after the plough now.” 

“I never thought I would live to see our 
father’s house turned into a tavern. But don’t 
consider my feelings, Beth,” said Aunt Leigh 
drearily. “ I suppose I will have to give up my 
own room and go up into the attic.” 

“Indeed you won’t,” said her sister quickly. 
“Climbing stairs with that weak heart of 
yours! You will keep your own room, Leigh, 
and not be bothered by anything or anybody. 
The boys and I can run the house, boarders 
and all; can’t we, Dick? And we’ll begin at 
once, with Pat to help us. Take a pick at the 
strawberries first before I put them into the 
preserving-kettle. I have not seen them so 
fine for years, Leigh. We can make all the 
jam and wine we want, and have strawberry 
shortcake every day besides. And now we will 
put up the clean muslin curtains, and polish 
the old silver, and bring out mother’s china, 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


23 


for we have nothing else. For one hundred 
dollars a month we must give our best.” 

It was quite impossible to resist blithe, busy 
Aunt Beth, and soon Fluff was deposited in the 
stocking-basket, and Pat was crimping pillow¬ 
case ruffles, and Dick tacking up curtains, and 
Ted polishing andirons, while Aunt Leigh dole¬ 
fully darned the table-linen treasured unused 
for years, and moaned over the quaint old 
china and glass and silver brought out from 
locked closets. 

For Aunt Beth had her way, as the sunshine 
always does; and the busy note of preparation 
went on gleefully until all was ready, and 
the shabby old house shone from roof to 
grotmd with cleanliness and comfort and simple 
cheer. 

Every polished window-pane was flashing 
back the sunset fire merrily next evening, 
when a comfortable travelling-carriage turned 
the bend of the turnpike, and a pale-faced 
boy, half buried in rugs and cushions, looked 
out upon the beautiful picture stretching before 
him: the hill, the valley, the dancing waters, 
the old ivy-veiled home under the sheltering 
oaks. 


24 


PLAYWATER FARM, 


“Is that the place, mamma?” he asked of 
a fair, anxious lady beside him. 

“Yes, dear. Don’t lean forward; the road 
is so rough, Lester, you might strain your back. 
I think we had better close the window, doc¬ 
tor; there is a chill in this mountain air.” 

“ The air is what we are up here for, madam,” 
answered Doctor Deane, who sat opposite the 
newcomers. “ If you are going to shut it out, 
we may as well keep this young man in town. 
This is Mother Nature’s own sanitarium, as I 
told you, and we can’t temper it with steam 
heat.” 

“What a queer-looking old place!” said the 
boy, staring around him. “No fountains or 
drives or music or anything. Why, mamma, 
it isn’t like the places we go to at all.” 

“No, dear, it isn’t,” answered his mother 
anxiously; “but we have tried so many fash¬ 
ionable baths and springs, and they were not 
good for you; and you said you hated them so.” 

“I do,” the boy answered with tremulous 
earnestness. “ I have been bathed and douched 
and rubbed and dosed until I never want to see 
any springs again. And it is just as bad at 
the seaside, with salt-baths and massage, and 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


25 


nothing to do but roll around in a sick-chair 
up and down the sands. And at the Adiron- 
dacks, though I had a pony carriage, I got so 
tired.” 

“Poor darling!” murmured his mother piti¬ 
fully. “It’s only natural, you know, in his 
state, doctor.” 

“ Very natural indeed, madam,” answered the 
doctor dryly. 

“I am sure I have tried everything,” con¬ 
tinued the lady plaintively, while Lester lay 
back wearily among his cushions, his momen¬ 
tary interest gone. “Let me shade your eyes 
with my parasol, dear; this sunlight is too 
strong for you. We were going to Carlsbad 
this summer, as I told you, doctor; but my 
dear mother is so feeble that I may be called 
to her bedside at any moment, so I could not 
go so far from home. There are the pretty 
waterfalls I told you about, Lester; don’t you 
want to look out at them? ” 

“I don’t like waterfalls,” answered Lester 
wearily. “They make my head ache.” 

“My poor angel!” was the pitiful murmur. 
“This rough ride has been too much for him, 
doctor, as I feared. Close your eyes, dear, and 


26 


PLAYWATER FARM, 


as soon as we get to the house you shall go to 
bed and take one of your nice powders to put 
you to sleep.” 

” He takes sleeping-powders, does he? ” asked 
the old doctor grimly. 

“Always,” answered the lady, “after any 
excitement; his nerves are so delicate, you 
see, doctor.” 

“Yes, I see,” answered the old gentleman, 
surveying the white, listless face before him 
with a quiet twinkle in his eye. “ But the ordi¬ 
nary sleeping-powder won’t do here, madam. 
In fact it would be positively debilitating. Too 
much oxygen in the atmosphere. But if you 
will throw yours away, I have my medicine- 
chest with me and will mix you a powder more 
suitable to this mountain air.” 

“Oh, thank you, doctor, I wish you would,” 
said the lady eagerly. “ I really never thought 
of the change of air. And there are his ner¬ 
vines and tonics; they may be unsuitable, too, 
in this atmosphere.” 

“Most likely,” said the doctor. “In fact I 
would advise great caution in the use of all 
medicine for the present. We are fifteen him- 
dred feet above the sea, and the action of the 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


27 


heart is quickened by the altitude, as you 
know, madam.” 

“Oh, I see, I see. I won’t dare to give him 
a drop of anything without your advice, doctor. 
We must be very careful, for the dear boy’s 
heart is by no means strong.” 

“Are we almost there? I am so tired,” 
said Lester feebly. 

And v/e fear the stout old doctor muttered a 
“swear-word” under his breath as he saw 
Lester’s head, with its fair girlish curls, sink 
wearily on his mother’s shoulder, and his 
waxen lids close over the dull blue eyes; for 
the wise old physician recognized that this was 
a case where woman’s foolish tenderness would 
baffle all his skill. 

Two months before. Judge Martin, his old 
friend and Lester’s guardian, had consulted 
him confidentially in regard to his young ward. 
“My business is only with the boy’s money,” 
he had said bluntly. “His mother is his natu¬ 
ral guardian in all other things. But between 
her and her doctors the boy is likely to have 
the little life that is in him physicked away. 
His father died young, and Lester was born 
puny and delicate, and heir to a couple of mill- 


28 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


ions. God bless me, sir, I don’t think the chap 
has ever drawn a natural breath. They had 
him in a patent baby incubator, or something 
of the sort, before he was two hours old. And 
it has been nothing but cures and specialists 
of all kinds ever since. We have tried every¬ 
thing but sturdy old-fashioned common- 
sense; and that being your specialty I’ve come 
to you. Mrs. Leonard is looking for a place 
in the country, and if you can coax her up 
somewhere near you, and take the boy in 
hand for a few months—well, if you were any 
one else, I would say charge what you please; 
but I know that does not count with you. But 
if you can make any sort of a live boy out of 
that poor young money bags, he shall build a 
hospital for you, Deane.” 

“Take care,” said the old doctor, with a nod 
of his grizzled head, “ I may hold you to that 
bargain, Martin. I don’t pretend to be a 
miracle-worker, but if you can get the boy 
out of the hands of the experts and up near 
Playwater Springs, I’ll do what I can, and let 
old-fashioned Mother Nature do the rest.” 

But the doctor’s confidence in himself and 
Mother Nature almost failed this evening as he 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


29 


looked at the pale, listless face of his young 
patient, all unstirred and uninterested by the 
beauty of the scene around him: the soft green 
of the shadowy valley, the forest vistas blazing 
with the sunset, the leap of the laughing waters 
from the oak-crowned hill. 

Sylvan scenes were no novelty to Lester; 
he had been carried from one paradise of 
bloom and beauty to another ever since he 
had been bom. Even his city home had its 
park and fountain, its terrace and rose-bowers, 
which Mother Nature would find it hard to 
excel. He had a lake with swans and boats 
all his own. He had lived in summer palaces, 
where the gardens glowed with rare blossoms, 
and the air throbbed with music and flashed 
with electric lights. He had floated over 
summer seas in great white-winged yachts that 
bore him and his mother where they willed. 
His life had been like a fairy dream; for his 
puny hand held the wizard wand of gold. 

It was little wonder, then, that he lay back 
pale and listless in the carriage, unheeding 
the tender beauty of the sunset, the splendor 
of the western sky, when the gates of heaven 
seemed swinging open imder canopies of 


30 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


purple and rose, the pale star shining like a 
silver lamp on the closing portals of the day, 
the kiss of the mountain breeze, the twitter 
of the sleepy birds, the laugh of the “ Playing 
Waters” leaping down the hill. 

“My poor darling! The journey has ex¬ 
hausted him,” murmured Mrs. Leonard, hold¬ 
ing her jewelled vinaigrette to the darling’s 
nose, while the doctor looked on in grim 
silence, and at funeral pace the heavy car¬ 
riage rolled along the terraced road that 
wound up to Playwater gate. And then— 
then suddenly the solemn stillness was broken 
by a wild tumult of shout and shriek and 
rushing water, a storm of spray whitened 
the hillside, and old Sweet, swollen into a 
foaming torrent, leaped upon the passing 
carriage, drenching its startled occupants from 
head to foot. 

“ Thunderation I ” spluttered the doctor, 
springing to his feet. 

“My boy, my boy!” shrieked Mrs. Leonard, 
as Lester, gasping and shuddering, started 
from her arms. 

“You young scoundrels!” roared the doctor 
wrathfully, when, the carriage rolling out of 


PLAYWATER FARM. 


31 


the sweeping waters, he caught sight of two 
excited little figures wildly gesticulating on 
the rocks above. “ What sort of a trick is 
this?” 

“It is no trick at all. Gee whiz! we are 
sorry, doctor,” said Dick as he and Ted, 
breathless and wide-eyed, reached the road. 
“We had dammed up old Sweet to fill the 
water-tank, when—when he broke loose like 
this.” 

“You have killed my boy, you little 
wretches,” sobbed Mrs. Leonard passionately. 

But the fairy prince, drenched, shivering, 
gasping as he was, rose to the occasion nobly. 

“No, they haven’t, mamma; indeed they 
haven’t,” and the dull blue eyes lighted with 
boyish sympathy as they fell on the two ragged, 
rueful young sinners beside the road. “I’m 
not hurt a bit, mamma. Gee! wasn’t it a 
douche, though!” and Lester laughed a faint, 
low, little laugh. “It was the joiliest bath 
I ever had.” 

“Ah!” said the doctor to himself, catching 
his breath after his ducking, with a grim 
smile, “that sounds promising. There may 
be hope for my young man yet.” 


CHAPTER III. 


OLD ST. bride’s. 

Great was the consternation of the gentle 
old ladies at Playwater Hall when their guests 
arrived drenched and shivering from old 
Sweet’s rough welcome. Mrs. Leonard was 
hysterically helpless with alarm, but Aunt 
Beth soon had a log fire burning and snapping 
on the big hearth in Lester’s dimity-draped 
chamber, and the boy rubbed and warmed 
until his pale cheeks glowed. Then, when he 
was safely tucked away in the great four- 
poster, with its downy pillows and sheets fra¬ 
grant with dried roses and lavender, the good 
lady proceeded to coax and coddle and soothe 
the nervous mother. 

“ It won’t hurt him a bit, madam, not a bit,” 
said Doctor Deane cheerily, coming to Aunt 
Beth’s assistance. ” There’s a great deal to be 
said for hydropathy, you know, though I 
32 


OLD ST. BRIDE'S. 


33 


wouldn't advise in general such practice as 
Doctor Dick’s. You see the youngsters had 
been at work all day damming the spring, so 
as to save this fine water for use in the house. 
But old Sweet, it seems, refused to be dammed 
and broke loose. Give the boy this,” and the 
doctor handed Mrs. Leonard some carefully 
folded papers which he had just filled with 
powdered sugar from Miss Beth’s pantry. 
” One every hour until he goes to sleep, madam, 
and in the morning I will call again.” 

But before the doctor had finished the cup 
of tea which Aunt Leigh insisted on pouring 
for him on the vine-wreathed porch, Lester was 
sleeping softly as a healthy babe. 

“Looks as if old Sweet had hit the case 
right,” the old gentleman laughed to himself 
as he drove off through the gathering twilight. 
“I’ve no doubt that was the first healthy 
shock the boy has had in his coddled life. 
George! I begin to have some hopes of him. 
I thought this evening that they had softened 
him, bones and brains, beyond cure. But I 
really believe there’s a chance for him yet.” 

And indeed when Doctor Deane drove over 
next morning he found Lester none the worse 


34 


OLD ST. BRIDE’S. 


for his ducking, but seated in Aunt Beth’s 
rocking-chair on the shaded porch and taking 
an unusual interest in the unpacking of the big 
wagons that had brought his belongings from 
the depot. A motley show they made of all 
that gold could buy to ease the pain and cheer 
the weary hours of this poor little enchanted 
prince. Bath and bed and swing and easy- 
chair, toys and games and books of every kind; 
while a basket phaeton and Shetland pony 
completed the display that made Dick and 
Ted stare in silent wonder, as Victor and 
Fifine—the French “man” and “maid”— 
moved deftly around, unpacking, arranging, 
and generally taking possession of the estab¬ 
lishment. They seemed oddly out of place 
in the wide, shabby old house—Fifine with her 
lace cap and apron and fluttering ribbons, and 
Victor with his sloe-black eyes and shining 
hair and dapper dress. 

Doctor Deane’s keen glance rested on them 
disapprovingly. 

“A nice pair of monkeys,” he growled, as, 
after a few cheery words to his patient, he 
strolled off with Dick down the box-bordered 
path. “Aunt Beth will have her hands full 


OLD ST. BRIDE'S. 


35 


with these newcomers, Dick. Thank the 
Lord, lad, you haven’t a million to addle your 
brains and soften your bones.” 

“ Did the million do it? ” asked Dick. 

“Well, not altogether,” was the grim answer. 
“A million or so would not be such a bad 
thing for you or me; but in this case, with 
doctors and doting mothers and French mon¬ 
keys to help along, I am afraid it will prove 
fatal. Look there,” and the old gentleman 
paused at a turn of the road and pointed back 
to the porch. “They’ve got him in a patent 
air-cushioned rolling chair with an umbrella 
over it to keep off God’s sunshine, when he 
ought to be tumbled out on the lawn to scramble 
around until those legs of his find out what 
they were made for. But with a rubber-tired 
rolling chair cushioned in satin, and two French 
popinjays like those dancing around him, I 
am afraid we have a bad case. Doctor Dick.” 

“ If you want him tumbled out on the 
lawn,” said Dick, “I’ll tumble him for you.” 

“No, no,” laughed the doctor. “We are 
not going in for such heroic practice just yet, 
though I must say you began bravely yester¬ 
day, Dick. But there’s one thing you can do 


36 


OLD ST. BRIDES 


for the poor little chap, Dick. Spare an hour 
or so occasionally to that padded chair. Cut 
out that yellow-faced jackanapes that runs 
around with him, and give the lad a breezy 
push over the hills, and some healthy boy talk 
about horses, dogs, guns, rabbit-traps, any¬ 
thing but his wretched, sickly self. And if 
between us we can get him on his legs”—the 
doctor’s keen eyes softened as they fell on 
Dick’s patched jacket and brimless hat, and 
he thought what a fraction of his young pa¬ 
tient’s income could do for this bright, father¬ 
less boy—“I’ll divide fees with you, Dick,” he 
added as he swung himself up on the gray mare 
that had been patiently browsing on Aunt 
Beth’s sweet-williams. And nodding cheerily 
to his small confrere, Doctor Deane rode off 
through the gate. 

“Gee! that would be a job!” thought Dick 
ruefully, as from the bend of the road he sur¬ 
veyed the rolling chair propelled by the jacka¬ 
napes up and down the porch. “I’d rather 
tackle a baby-carriage full of twins than push a 
thing like that.” 

And in deep boyish disgust Dick betook 
himself to the river for a morning’s fishing. It 


OLD ST BRIDES. 


37 


was an hour’s walk to the noble stream that 
wound, broad and beautiful, below these 
wooded hills, but the tramp was nothing to 
sturdy Dick. Scrambling by short cuts over 
rocks, wading through brooks, he soon reached 
the shore where, high upon the oak-shaded 
cliff, the old Mission of St. Bride’s had stood 
for more than two hundred years. Stately 
churches had taken up the work begun in this 
humble little chapel where, long ago, the In¬ 
dians had gathered around the strange “black 
robe ’ ’ to hear for the first time the glad tidings 
he had brought to this New World. But the 
Mission bell still sent its olden call over river 
and shore, and holy men, worn with their 
labors in busier fields, came to this quaint, 
almost forgotten spot to find rest and health. 

For the past three years this ancient fortress 
of the Faith had been held by Father Felix, an 
old soldier of the cross broken sadly by the 
toils and privations of mission life in the far 
East. There were whispers of a terrible mar¬ 
tyrdom barely escaped by the aid of faithful 
Christians, but of this no one had ever heard 
Father Felix speak. He was a tall, white- 
haired old man with bright, kindly eyes, 


38 


OLD ST. BRIDES. 


whose clear vision, after sweeping the whole 
field of earthly knowledge, had been lifted in 
childlike faith to the sky. 

There were no schools within thirty miles of 
Playwater; tutors and governesses were out 
of the question. So, after Aunt Leigh had 
done her best, according to the methods of 
forty years ago, with her young nephews, she 
hailed with delight the good old priest’s offer 
to teach Dick. And so for the last year our 
hero had been a daily visitor to St. Bride’s, 
where he was making a triumphant progress 
through the rudiments that filled his tutor’s 
heart with pride. 

Though it was holiday-time now, he could 
not pass the old ivy-grown gate that swung 
half open on its rusty hinges, but turned into 
the Mission garden for a word with Father 
Felix, who was gathering the red roses that 
clambered over his southern wall for the chapel 
altar. 

“Ah, my truant, it is you,” said the old man, 
looking round with a smile. “ I have not seen 
you since Mass last Sunday, when you dropped 
your surplice and were off before Brother Barry 
had the candles out. I had something to say 


OLD ST. BRIDE^S. 


39 


to you if you could have waited for my thanks¬ 
giving.” 

“Aunt Leigh did not feel well, and I was in 
a hurry to get her home,” answered Dick. 

“Ah, true, true. She came fasting to our 
good Lord,” said the old priest, nodding. 
“You should have stopped at the house, my 
son, and asked Brother Barry for a glass of 
milk or wine. And that reminds me of what 
I wished to say. See,” and he pointed to a 
long stretch of bushes glittering with shin¬ 
ing fruit. “The currants are ripe. Brother 
Barry has taken all he can use, and there are 
too many even for the birds. Would not the 
good aunts like some for jelly and wine? ” 

“That they would, father,” answered Dick. 
“We have a few bushes at Playwater, but 
none like these.” 

“Then come to-morrow, bring the little 
brother, and gather all you can.” 

“Thank you, father, we will,” said Dick. 
“And now let me climb up and get some of 
the prettier roses for you that grow higher 
than those you have.” 

“No need, no need,” said Father Felix, 
shaking his head. “The little roses are as 


40 


OLD ST. BRIDES. 


sweet in God’s sight as the great, and they last 
longer on the altar. The great ones some¬ 
times fall apart from their very size. Is there 
not a lesson in that, my Richard? It is safer 
to be little than great.” 

“Safer?” echoed Dick with a puzzled look. 
“ But it is only cowards, father, who think 
always of what is safe.” 

“There is a wisdom that is not cowardice, 
my son, but that makes men brave and bold, 
fearless and strong,” said Father Felix softly. 
“ But I will not preach over my roses. Tell me 
how all goes at home. Have the strangers you 
expected come? ” 

“Yes,” answered Dick ruefully. 

“And your good aunts find them pleasant, 
I hope?” 

“Not much,” replied Dick. “The whole 
place is upset, father. There was never such 
a fuss at Playwater before. Servants and 
horses and carriages, and swings and rolling 
chairs, and a great big baby of a boy that has 
got something the matter with his bones, and 
has to be wheeled around with a pink umbrella 
over his head, as if he were a wax doll that 
would melt if the sun shone on him.” 


OLD ST. BRIDES. 


41 


“Poor child!” said Father Felix pitifully. 
“ I must go see him. And he has come to a 
good place. The dear aunts will be kind to 
him, I know. And you, my Richard, too. 
You are so strong, so bold, the good God has 
given you such health, such strength. You 
must help this poor boy to bear his burden. 
’Tis a cross heavy indeed for one so young.” 

Dick did not answer. He could not explain 
to Father Felix how his sturdy boy nature 
recoiled from this weak, pampered newcomer, 
with his fair, girlish curls and his pink um¬ 
brella. For Dick’s disgust at the new order of 
things had been growing steadily ever since 
Lester’s arrival at Pla 3 rwater. The anxious, 
hysterical mother, the helpless, overgrown baby 
boy, the dapper, smirking servants, had made 
such a bewildering change in the quiet old farm 
that Dick felt hot and indignant and resentful 
at this invasion of his home. 

Something of this the keen eyes of his old 
tutor read in Dick’s honest face. 

“You do not like the poor sick boy’s com¬ 
ing, eh, my Richard ? ’ ’ 

“No, I don’t, father,” blurted out Dick 
frankly. “ It is as bad as if we had a houseful 


42 


OLD ST, BRIBERS. 


of babies. If he were a cripple like Dave 
White, now, who tries to make the best of 
things, it would be very different; but for a 
fellow twelve years old to be nothing more 
than a wax doll—” Dick paused feeling that 
the bright eyes fixed upon his face were not 
altogether approving. 

“Ah, I see, I see,” said Father Felix. 
“But one cannot always tell about these doll- 
boys, my Richard. There was one with me at 
college, so pretty, so dainty a mother’s darling. 
La Poupe'e the boys called him, and he cried 
at the name. But the terrible Prussian war 
came; fortune, friends, all were swept away. 
La Poupe'e became one of the greatest generals 
in France. There was another—” Father 
Felix’s voice grew softer—“ a mother’s idol too; 
fair and gentle and pure as a girl—one of my 
first pupils when I was little more than a youth 
myself. Dolly they called him, and he bore 
the name with laughing good humor even from 
those who loved him best. Dolly’s real name 
is written among God’s martyrs, Richard. He 
died a young hero among the Chinese when the 
missions there meant torture and death. So 
do not scorn the doll-boys, Richard; often they 


OLD ST. BRIDE^S 


43 


make the strongest, bravest men. And now 
I must go put my roses on the altar. Such a 
lonely little altar it is all the week! Come, you 
shall go with me for a moment, and we will 
pray to be made tender as well as brave, Rich¬ 
ard, gentle as well as strong.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

MAKING FRIENDS. 

Dick followed his tutor into the quaint old 
Mission church, and as he knelt for a few mo¬ 
ments before the altar, where the lamp had 
burned faithfully for nearly two hundred 
years, the blessing of the holy place seemed to 
fall upon him. “God has given you such 
health and strength.” Father Felix’s words 
would come back to him again and again during 
this bright summer day, as he clambered over 
the rocks, waded out into the river, rowed 
across the stream and up the creek in the little 
skiff that was kept at the Mission wharf, en¬ 
joying to the full all the freedom and strength 
and health that were Heaven’s gifts to him. 
It was simset when he reached home, brown and 
wet and muddy, the brim of his hat and the 
best part of his jacket lost in a brier-bush, but 

44 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


45 


a string of silvery perch over his shoulder that 
told of a glorious day of sport. 

The rolling chair with its pink umbrella was 
at the garden gate, where Lester, in a spot¬ 
less suit of white flannel, his fair hair newly 
brushed and curled, had been wheeled to enjoy 
the southern breeze. 

This morning Dick would have hurried by 
without a word, but now he stopped with a 
cheery, boyish greeting. “Hallo!” he said 
heartily. 

“Hallo!” piped Lester in return. “Been 
fishing, haven’t you?” 

“Yes; and they bit like—like fleas,” an¬ 
swered the young fisherman, rather at a loss for 
a simile. 

“I’ve never been fishing in my life,” said 
the young millionaire wistfully. “Once they 
let me catch crabs from the side of our yacht, 
but it was not much fun.” 

“I should think not,” answered Dick dryly. 
“ But to pull in a lot of shiners like these, I tell 
you is fine sport. And then there’s the fun of 
climbing and wading and paddling along the 
river and creek, looking for good places. I 
struck one little eddy under Indian Rock 


46 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


where I pulled up five fish in as many minutes. 
It was ^most as good as duck-shooting.” 

“Can you shoot too?” asked Lester breath¬ 
lessly. 

“Shoot!” echoed Dick laughing. “Why, 
every boy along this shore shoots as soon as 
he is big enough to hold a gun. Our Ted 
can liit on the wing now, and Pat—you haven’t 
seen Pat yet—even Pat has brought down a 
bird once or twice. Of course they don’t go 
duck-shooting, but I’ve been out with Colonel 
Seymour and Uncle Dan Dyer for the last 
two seasons. I tell you that was sport. We 
bagged forty birds in one day.” 

“Bagged birds?” repeated Lester curiously. 
“What for?” 

“ I mean we shot them—put them in our 
game-bags,” answered Dick laughing. “And 
Uncle Dan and I got the most of all. We made 
a floating blind and went down Dyer’s Creek, 
that is banked with wild celery. The ducks 
come there in shoals to feed on it, and Uncle 
Dan swears they have got so knowing that 
they put out pickets to watch for hunters and 
boats. But we had a blind, that is, a boat 
hidden by boughs and sticks so they couldn’t 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


47 


see it, and we got two or three good bangs at 
them. Gee! didn’t we stir them up! You 
could have heard their honk, honk, as they 
whirred away, for a mile. One big chap tum¬ 
bled across the creek, and another one on the 
point, and another in the water. I had to 
jump in and swim for them, for Uncle Dan lost 
his head and nearly capsized the boat. But I 
brought them all in,” concluded Dick, “and I 
tell you they were whoppers, two of them four 
feet from wing to wing. I’ve got their tail- 
feathers yet.” 

“Oh, have you?” asked Lester eagerly. 
“Can I see them to-morrow, and will there be 
any wild ducks while I am here? Could I go 
down to the weir and look at them? Could 
Victor wheel me there?” 

“Monsieur, no, no!” Victor, who had been 
standing in respectful silence behind his young 
master’s chair, roused to quick alarm. “ Wheel 
you after ze wild ducks! It would be quite 
impossible, monsieur!” 

“It would not, it would not. You say that 
because you are a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow 
and don’t want to be troubled.” The boyish 
interest that had been kindled for a moment in 


48 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


Lester’s eyes went out and left only the pale, 
peevish face of a spoiled child. “Push me 
back to the house. I want to go to mamma; 
I won’t stay out here with you any longer. 
Push me back, I say.” 

“ But ze breeze, monsieur, ze pleasant eve¬ 
ning breeze. Madame said you were to enjoy 
it here until ze sun went down.” 

“ I don’t want to enjoy the breeze, I am tired 
of it. I am tired of you; I am tired of every¬ 
thing. Take me back, I say.” And Victor 
obeyed with a look on his sallow face that was 
not pleasant to see. 

“ Geewhillikins! ” muttered Dick as he stared 
blankly after the disappearing pair. “ I thought 
he was a boy for a minute, and talked to 
him like one. But he isn’t. He is a baby— 
just a curly-haired crosspatch of a baby.” 
And rather dismayed at the result of his first 
interview with Lester, Dick kept on to the 
kitchen door, where he deposited his string of 
fish with the delighted Uncle Pete, and went 
in to report to Aunts Beth and Leigh, who had 
begun to grow somewhat anxious at their boy’s 
absence. 

But neither Aunt Beth nor Aimt Leigh 


MAKING FRIENDS, 


49 


was in sight, and wild confusion reigned in the 
great kitchen, where Aunt Chloe was still 
“wrastling” grimly with unfinished labors, 
instead of resting, as was usual at this late 
hour, in well-earned peace on the kitchen porch. 

“Hallo! what’s the matter. Aunt Chloe?’’ 
asked Dick. “Company for supper?” 

“Company, chile, yes, de wustest sort,” 
answered Aunt Chloe with an indignant sniff. 
“Lord}?-! I’d a got up fried chickens an’ hot 
waffles for a houseful of our folks, an’ been 
done wif it while I’s a-foolin’ ’long wif dese city 
folks an’ dere airs. Dat ar peaked poony boy 
done upsot dis place, shuah. It’s fresh-made 
chicken broth an’ hot baths before he goes to 
bed, if we all hez to roast for it. An’ it’s been 
custards an’ creams an’ jellies an’ all sorts of 
fixin’s all day, wif dem two furrin niggers 
a-runnin’ in an’ out, an’ buzzin’ like bees in 
folks’ ears till dere ain’t been no end to de 
work an’ wrastle. Miss Leigh gone to bed clean 
done out wif de worrit, an’ Miss Beth hed to 
go in de dinin’-room to pour out de tea. All 
de best chaney an’ silver out, an’ ’pears ez if 
nuffln’ was good enough. Sit down dar, chile, 
an’ I’ll give you some supper out here. Bress 


50 


MAKING FRIENDS, 


de Lord, you’s a nachal boy an’ not a poor 
sp’iled, spindly critter like dat city billionaire,” 
concluded Mam Chloe as she heaped a big 
kitchen plate with ham and chicken, drew out 
a smoking pan of biscuits from the oven, put a 
brown jug of honey and a cracked pitcher of 
milk on the spotless table, and let Dick fall to 
on this informal repast with the zest a “ nachal” 
boy should. 

Then when gentle Aunt Beth came out a 
little flushed and fluttered with her new cares, 
Dick was on hand to help, to comfort, and to 
cheer her as only a “nachal” boy can, setting 
the great crocks of milk in the spring-house, 
bringing fresh water from old Sweet which was 
still leaping recklessly down the hill, and 
chopping and splitting wood for the morning 
fire. 

Altogether, when everything was done, it 
was a very tired Dick that stretched himself 
on the soft grass under the big apple-tree with 
Ted, his curly head pillowed on old Lear’s 
shaggy back, at his side. The great New¬ 
foundland had adopted Ted when he first came 
as a baby to Playwater, and had been his 
faithful guardian ever since. Aunts Beth and 


MAKING FRIENDS, 


SI 

Leigh and even Mam Chloe might be and were 
eluded by the mercurial Ted, but it was im¬ 
possible to escape Lear’s vigilance. Twice he 
had rescued his reckless charge from the river 
where it ran forty feet deep below Indian 
Rock; a dozen times he had found and guided 
home the small wanderer when his taste for 
explorations led him into unknown forest 
depths; and once when a severe illness threat¬ 
ened the boy’s life Lear had lain for days, 
watchful and despairing, at his door. Woe to 
the hand that even in sport was laid roughly 
on Ted when Lear was by! The dog would 
show his great teeth and growl in a way that 
said plainly, ‘ ‘ Beware! ’ ’ And the crowning bliss 
of Lear’s declining years was to lie stretched 
on the soft grass after a luxurious supper of 
chicken-bones, with Ted’s curly head pillowed 
on his back. 

“Has Pat been here to-day? ” asked Dick. 

“No,” answered Ted, “and I didn’t go there 
either. I’ve been home all day; the new boy 
has been showing me his things. Gee! you 
ought to see them, Dick. Games and picture- 
books and puzzles and kodaks and printing- 
presses, engines that go with real steam, and 


52 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


an electric railway twenty feet long. We are 
going to put it up to-morrow in his room if 
Aimt Beth will take down his bed.” 

“Take down his bed!” echoed Dick in dis¬ 
may, for Aunt Beth’s great four-posters with 
their lace-trimmed curtains and valances were 
pieces of “resistance” even to a young million¬ 
aire’s whim. “ Where will he sleep? ” 

“Oh, his mother will rent another room. 
You see he wants to put up his railway and his 
Eiffel tower. And he has a magic lantern with 
pictures that move. He says he can have 
everything he wants.” 

“Can he?” asked Dick, thinking of the sun¬ 
set scene at the garden gate. 

“Everything!” answered Ted in an impres¬ 
sive tone. “Monkeys, dogs, parrots, ponies— 
anything. He says he is going to get a ship 
of his own next year, and sail all around the 
world; see the Turks and the Japs and every 
place. Gee! it must be fine to be rich as that, 
Dick.” 

“ It is a heap finer to have a pair of good legs,” 
answered Dick bluntly. 

“ Legs? ” echoed Ted. “ Why, everybody has 
legs,” and he surveyed his own brown, brier- 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


53 


scratched members inappreciatively. “And if 
you can sail and ride and wheel wherever you 
want to go, you can do without them.” 

“Try it,” said Dick; “just try being rolled 
around all day with a pillow at your back like 
a sick girl. Think of a fellow never being able 
to jump or climb or run or dive or wade or 
swim, never being able to ride or shoot or fish, 
never being a live boy at all, but a poor, sick, 
weak crosspatch of a baby. Ted, you don’t 
know how lucky you are. I didn’t know until 
to-day. I wouldn’t swap places with that 
fellow up-stairs for ten himdred thousand 
millions of dollars.” 

And while this heartfelt boyish Te Deum 
went up beneath the stars, the young million¬ 
aire was tossing restlessly on his bed, his 
thoughts turned into new channels. 

“Mamma, can’t I go fishing to-morrow? 
Won’t you get a boat, and let Victor take me 
out on the river with the other boys? ” 

“My darling, my darling, I am afraid you 
would get hurt. The roads here are so wild 
and rocky; the boys are so rough. If you will 
wait a little, we will go to the seashore and send 
for the yacht.’’ 


54 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


I don’t like the yacht,” answered Lester 
peevishly. ” It was so close down in the cabin, 
and the smell of the cooking made me sick. 
I’d like to go with the other boys, and steer and 
row and catch fish. Oh, mamma, if you could 
just hear all the boys do up here. They swim 
and row and climb, and Dick goes out duck¬ 
shooting with a real gun, and he gets into a 
blind so the ducks can’t see him—they come 
in crowds down here to eat celery, he says— 
and then they bag them, mamma, forty in a 
day.” 

“Yes, yes, dear; lie down.” For Lester had 
risen up among his pillows with shining eyes.” 
“This is all very well for rough country boys, 
but such wild sport wouldn’t suit you, dar¬ 
ling.” 

“Oh, but I would like it, I would like it,” 
said Lester excitedly. “I would like to go 
hunting and fishing and rowing too.” 

“You shall, darling, you shall,” said his 
mother soothingly. “I’ll order a boat from 
Baltimore to-morrow—a nice comfortable boat 
with awning and cushions; and we will get 
a reliable man to manage it, and I will take you 
hunting and fishing, darling, myself. Only 


MAKING FRIENDS. 


55 


don’t excite yourself; your cheeks are quite 
flushed. "^You shall have everything you want. 
Lie down now and go to sleep.” 

“Fishing, hunting, with those rough, bare¬ 
legged boys,” murmured Mrs. Leonard as her 
darling at last dropped off into quiet sleep. 
“ It would simply kill him! Oh, I have brought 
him to the wrong place! My poor darling, I 
feel I have brought him to the wrong place. 
That blunt old doctor doesn’t understand the 
case at all.” 


CHAPTER V. 


fluff's find. 

Day began early at Playwater; there was 
no napping or dozing after the sun’s first wink 
from the eastern sky. 

Big Bob, who had ruled the roost for the last 
dozen years, must have felt his responsibilities 
and slept with one bright old eye open, for at 
the first break of rosy light he flapped his wings, 
and sounded a reveille that echoed through 
chicken-house and barn and stable. Though 
he were leagues away in dreamland, that 
clarion note of Big Bob’s always reached 
Dick’s ear. “Lots to do, to do,” it seemed to 
call to him. “Lots to do, to do.” And the 
cheery cock-crow certainly had a true note this 
morning that made Dick roll out of his bed 
before he could half-open his eyes. 

“Tumble up, Ted,” he said, giving a broth¬ 
erly shake to the curly-headed little sleeper at 
56 


FLUFF'S FIND, 


57 


his side. “Aunt Beth has her hands full, and 
we have to help her. Wake up, I say.” 

“Oh, I can’t, I can’t. Let me alone, Dick; 
it’s night yet.” 

“No, it isn’t; it’s day. Don’t you hear 
Big Bob crowing? We’ve got the chickens 
to feed, and the cows to turn out, and the peas 
and beans to gather for dinner. And old Mac 
has to go to the blacksmith and get a shoe. 
Hurry up or we won’t get off to St. Bride’s for 
the currants to-day.” 

“Currants!” The call of duty fell faintly 
upon Ted’s ear, but that last word was like a 
blackbird’s whistle to its roguish mate. Cur¬ 
rants! The St. Bride currants! Ted knew 
them well. Those long rows of jewelled bushes 
gleaming beyond the little chapel window had 
kept his eyes and thoughts wandering hope¬ 
lessly from his prayer-book all the last Sun¬ 
day’s Mass. 

“Are we going to St. Bride’s for currants, 
Dick?” 

“Yes. Hurry up. Father Felix said to 
come and take all we wanted. So move 
lively, Ted, and let’s get through our work 
quick. The blackheart cherries are ripe too. 


58 


FLUFF'S FIND. 


and just dropping off the trees like rain. 
Brother Barry was grieving yesterday that 
he couldn’t turn an orphan asylum into the 
garden to eat up the fruit. He says there’s a 
lot of poor little chaps in town that never saw 
a cherry-tree or a currant-bush in their lives.” 

“Why don’t they come down here and look 
at them, then?” asked Ted, his blue eyes wide 
open now at such wilful blindness. 

“Because they can’t, stupid,” said Dick. 
“Because they haven’t any money, or any 
fathers or mothers or aimts or anybody to 
take them. We would be orphans, too, if we 
didn’t have Aunt Beth and Aimt Leigh, so you 
had better be good to them, Ted, and help 
them all you can, or some day you may be 
whisked off into an orphan asylum yourself.” 
With which dire threat Dick dropped on his 
knees to say his morning prayers before start¬ 
ing off on his daily duties, while Ted, thoroughly 
aroused by his brother’s startling commingling 
of hope and fear, tumbled out of bed and into 
his little patched clothes, visions of currant- 
bushes and cherry-trees stretching before him 
in delightful perspective, for, though the strong 
spirit of manhood was beginning to waken in 


FLUFF'S FIND. 


59 


Dick’s boyish nature, Ted still lingered in the 
blessed paradise of childhood, where all is sun¬ 
shine and gladness and the shadows of thought 
and care never reach. 

Long before poor Lester, wrapped in a dress- 
ing-gown of Chinese silk, was rolled out on 
the wide porch to nibble at a daintily served 
breakfast, Ted’s work was done. 

He had driven the cows out to pasture in the 
clover-fields, his bare brown legs wading knee- 
deep in the dewy, fragrant bloom. He had 
fed the three families of wee downy chicks that 
had been his especial care since they had 
“chipped their shells.” He had gathered two 
quarts of blackberries for the roly-poly pudding 
Aunt Beth was to make for dinner. And now, 
with his tom hat pulled over his sunburned 
curls, a big basket swinging from his arm, and 
Lear, watchful for mischief, at his side, Ted 
was off to join Dick, who had preceded him 
with an order for groceries at the cross-roads 
store. 

Then for St. Bride’s with its currant-bushes 
and cherry-trees! St. Bride’s with its shining 
river for boys to wade and swim! St. Bride’s, 
where Brother Barry could tell true, real mis- 


6o 


FLUFFS FIND. 


sionary stories far more interesting than could 
be read in any book. 

With such a well-earned day of delight before 
him, Ted was bounding gleefully down the box- 
bordered path when a weak, weary little voice 
called his name. “Ted, oh, Ted, stop a min¬ 
ute. Where are you going, Ted?” And Les¬ 
ter’s pale face looked down wistfully from the 
porch at his sturdy, bare-legged little play¬ 
fellow of yesterday. 

“Lots of places,” answered Ted. “Dick is 
waiting for me at the store now, and we are 
going to get cherries and currants at St. Bride’s 
for Aunt Beth to make wine and jelly.” 

“Oh, don’t,” said Lester. “Stay with me, 
and we will put up the Eiffel tower and electric 
railway. And I’ll show you how to take pic¬ 
tures with my camera and print. We will have 
all kinds of fun, Ted.” 

Fun? Poor Lester! Fun? Chubby Ted 
stared at the pale, wistful little face in wonder. 
“Gee! boy,” he said, “you don’t know what 
fun is. Dave White has got worse legs than 
yours, and he sees lots of it.” 

“Does he have to go round in a chair?” 
asked Lester eagerly. 


FLUFFS FIND, 


6i 


“No,’^ answered Ted, “he never had a chair 
to go round in. He was too poor to have any¬ 
thing till Brother Barry made him a pair of 
pine crutches; and you ought to see the way 
he flies around on them up and down the hills 
and everywhere. Even Dick can’t keep up 
with him. It is almost like he had wings. 
And he can row and swim, and lie on his back 
in the bushes and shoot. Dave can do any¬ 
thing since he got his crutches. Brother 
Barry padded the tops with an old pew-cushion, 
and they are fine. I tell you what. I am 
going up to St. Bride’s this morning,” con¬ 
cluded Ted, “and I’ll ask Brother Barry to 
make you a pair, and Dave will come down and 
show you how to swing around on them. You’d 
have a heap better time than you do now.” 

“The doctors wouldn’t let me,” said Lester 
hopelessly. “The doctors won’t let me do 
anything. Victor, wheel me out on the lawn; 
I don’t want any more breakfast.” 

“ If Monsieur would only eat this nice fresh 
egg,” pleaded Victor in his most honeyed tone. 

“I won’t, I won’t!” And with a fierce, im¬ 
patient gesture Lester struck the egg-cup from 
him, sending its contents in a yellow stream 


62 


FLUFF'S FIND. 


down Victor’s immaculate shirt-front. ‘‘ I hate 
eggs and milk and chicken. Wheel me out on 
the lawn and let me alone, Victor.” 

And as Victor obeyed, brushing meanwhile 
as best he could the repulsive d6bris from his 
shirt, there came into his eyes the same look 
that Dick had noticed the evening before—a 
sullen, angry look, that, though quickly veiled 
by downcast lids, was neither good nor pleasant 
to see. 

Ted, after staring for a moment in blank 
amazement at Lester’s petulant outburst, 
bounded on his merry way along the garden 
path, and through the gate and down the cliff 
where the springs were tumbling and singing 
in full chorus, old Sweet leading in a deep sub¬ 
bass, broken into strange tremors of harmony 
as he foamed and quavered over the rocks, 
until at last, with a great shower of spray that 
glimmered into rainbows, he made a final 
leap from a mossy ledge, and vanished in a 
fissure of the rocks below. Fluttering like a 
big butterfly on these rocks this morning was a 
pink simbonnet that Ted greeted with a gleeful 
shout: “ Pat, come on. We are going for cher¬ 
ries and currants to St. Bride’s.” 


FLUFF'S FIND. 


63 


I can t,*’ came the choking, sobbing answer. 
“Oh, Ted, come help me, please. Tve lost 
Fluff." 

“Where? how?" asked Ted, reaching the 
little mourner’s side in two bounds. 

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know." The 
pink sunbonnet was shaking with Pat’s sobs 
now. “I was coming up to see you all, and I 
let Fliiff down to frisk in the grass, for her leg 
is nearly all right now, and all of a sudden she 
went I don’t know where." 

“Call her," suggested Ted. “Here, puss, 
puss, puss. Fluffy, kitty." 

“Oh, it’s no use," wailed Pat. “I’ve been 
calling her and looking for her. It was just 
here I missed her." 

“You didn’t—didn’t hear her squeal, did 
you?" asked Ted apprehensively. 

“No," answered Pat, “I didn’t hear any- 
thmg. I saw her jumping over the grass one 
minute, and then—^then she was gone. Oh, 
my darling Fluff, when I have been nursing her 
for three whole days on fresh cream in mamma’s 
old work-basket!" 

“Maybe she has tumbled down a hole some¬ 
where and can’t get out. Lear could find her 


64 


FLUFF’S FIND. 


quick enough, if he would, but he hates cats. 
Hark! what was that, Pat? ” as a faint muffled 
sound came from somewhere beneath their 
feet. 

“It’s a mew. It’s Fluff’s mew!” cried Pat 
excitedly. “Oh, where can she be, Ted? ” 

“Down in the ground,” answered Ted. 
“Hi! Lear, old boy,” as the dog pricked up his 
ears at this faint challenge of a hated race, 
“find her; find pussy.” But though treeing 
cats had been the nightly diversion of Lear’s 
earlier years, he was past the follies of youth 
now; a fearful encounter with a young wild cat, 
that had laid open his cheek and nearly de¬ 
prived him of an eye, had taught him discre¬ 
tion. His only feeling for the feline race now 
was one of cautious disgust. His ears dropped 
again and he suddenly became deaf and indif¬ 
ferent. 

“He won’t do it,” said Ted. “He won’t 
hunt anything now; he is too old and lazy.” 

“Listen, listen! She is mewing again,” said 
Pat tremulously. “Oh, we will have to find 
her, Ted.” 

“Stay where you are, Pat, and I’ll hunt,” 
said Ted gallantly. And he began to search 


FLUFF'S FIND. 65 

the rugged ledge with the keen eye of a country 
boy. 

Suddenly Fluff’s mew was heard with a 
curious rattling sound at his very feet. Ted 
parted a tangle of wires and gave a shout of 
triumph. Two small furry legs and a gray tail 
were waving frantically. Fluff, whose curi¬ 
osity had been inherited from generations of 
mousers had gone head and fore legs deep into 
a tin box, where she was wedged hopelessly, 
the loose swinging lid having given way 
under her weight. 

“Oh, Fluff, my darling, my darling! She 
can’t lift her poor little lame leg yet,’’ cried 
Pat rapturously, as with much mewing the 
furry little explorer was set free. “Who could 
have put that horrid box there to catch 
her? ” 

“There’s a paper in it,” said Ted, star¬ 
ing, “and with writing on it! It looks like a 
letter.” 

“Oh, it can’t be,” said Pat positively. 
“Letters have stamps and envelopes, Ted. 
It’s a bill, and somebody has lost it with the 
box. Read it and see.” 

Ted unfolded the paper doubtfully. It was 


66 


FLUFF’S FIND, 


inscribed with a few scrawled and misspelled 
lines: 

“This is to say I am reddy to talk the bis- 
ness with yon—I will be down to morrow night, 
but the money must be sure—I will have no 
Yankee tricks—Do not come near the house— 
I will meet you at your call— 

“D-’’ 

“That’s all,” said Ted. “D—what does D 
mean, Pat? ” 

“It stands for Dick,” said Pat promptly, 
“and for Dave, and for Dan.” 

“But Dick or Dave didn’t write this,” said 
Ted. 

“It says something about business and 
money,” said Pat as, with the kitten on her 
shoulder, she bent the pink sun bonnet close 
to Ted’s sunny curls to inspect the puzzling 
lines. A pretty picture the two yoimg inno¬ 
cents made on the mossy ledge; but a pair of 
evil eyes, staring at them through the tangled 
wires, flamed with fear and anger at the sight. 
Faithful old Lear pricked up his ears and gave 
a sullen growl that made the unseen watcher 
call out sharply: 

“Hold that dog of yours, boy, unless you 



FLUFFS FIND. 


67 


want a bullet in him. It’s a bad lookout for 
travellers through these woods when you have 
brutes like that at large.” 

“Down, Lear, down!” said Ted, flinging his 
arm around his comrade’s neck as a heavily 
built, sandy-haired man emerged from the 
bushes. “ Quiet, old boy 1 He won’t hurt you, 
sir.” 

“Gad, I’m not so sure of that,” said the 
stranger as Lear still continued to snarl omi¬ 
nously. “About as vicious-looking a beast as 
ever I have seen. By law, you ought to keep 
him chained up.” 

“He never was chained in his life, and there 
isn’t any law up here,” said Ted simply. 

“There isn’t, eh? ” said the newcomer with 
an unpleasant laugh. “No law either for man 
or beast.” 

“Oh, yes, there is,” interposed Pat. “Be¬ 
cause my papa is a lawyer, and a judge too; 
he puts people in jail when they steal and fight 
and cheat.” Doctor Deane told mamma that 
papa was the cleverest lawyer in the whole 
State.” 

The stranger’s eyes had no friendly light in 
them as they turned from Pat to Ted and 


68 


FLUFF'S FIND. 


thence to the bit of scrawled paper in the boy’s 
hand. Lear still growled. The sraall daugh¬ 
ter of the cleverest lawyer in the State looked 
up at him as innocently as the kitten on her 
shoulder. The combination was a trying one. 
But long and varied experience had made the 
newcomer equal to all occasions, however try¬ 
ing. “You are a bright pair of youngsters,” 
he said in a pleasanter tone. “Where are you 
going this fine morning?” 

“ Over to St. Bride’s Mission,” answered Ted. 

“I’m out for a day’s fishing on the river,” 
went on the stranger. “That tin box you’ve 
got is just the thing I want for bait. Will you 
sell it to me? ” 

“ Sell it? We can’t; it isn’t ours,” said honest 
Ted. “We found it in the bushes there with a 
paper in it.” 

“A paper!” exclaimed their companion in 
well-feigned surprise. “What kind of a paper? ” 

“We don’t know,” said Ted. “It says 
something about business and money and 
tricks; and there’s no name to it, only D. 
What do you think it means? ” And Ted inno¬ 
cently held out the puzzling document. 

“Fluff found it,” explained Pat. “She 


FLUFF'S FIND. 69 

tumbled right into the box, and couldn’t get 
out.” 

“Ha, ha, ha! ” laughed the stranger heartily. 
“Fluff found it, eh? No wonder; it’s an old 
lunch-box rank with musty bacon somebody 
has dropped in the woods. And the paper— 
some darky scrawl about card-playing, I sup¬ 
pose. No white man would write such a hand 
as that. I’ll give you a quarter for the box to 
hold worms.” 

“I don’t want a quarter,” said Ted. “You 
can have it for nothing. Down, Lear, down! 
Quiet, I say! ” 

“Your dog don’t seem to like me,” said the 
stranger with an impleasant smile. 

“No, he don’t,” said Ted blimtly. “You 
haven’t been near any wildcats, have you, 
mister? Because Lear is growling like he 
smelt one somewhere near.” 

“No,” was the answer. “But I have some¬ 
thing that can bite worse than a wildcat when 
vicious brutes like that of yours show their 
teeth.” And he pulled a pistol from his belt. 

“Don’t you dare to shoot my dog!” cried 
Ted, springing to Lear’s head in passionate 
defiance of the threat. 


70 


FLUFFS FIND. 


“ Keep him quiet, then, until I am out of his 
way,’’ said the other, plunging back into the 
underbrush whence he had come. And though 
Ted held stoutly to his old friend’s neck, Lear 
continued to growl and show his teeth omi¬ 
nously until the stranger was out of sight. 


CHAPTER VI. 

AT BUNNER’s. 

Meanwhile Dick, having concluded his 
“trade” at Banner’s store, was waiting with 
what patience he could command his brother’s 
arrival. 

Though Banner’s would scarcely have come 
up to modem requirements commercially, as a 
“waiting” place it was unrivalled, in fact, 
waiting seemed to be the chief business of its 
patrons. 

A comfortable array of kegs and boxes and 
barrels was scattered around the porch for the 
convenience of purchasers, who lingered an 
hour or so, chewing, whittling, and discussing 
the news while Banner put up their coffee, 
tea, sugar, calico, soap, or starch with the lei¬ 
surely composure of one for whom the wheels 
of time had stopped at the surrender of Lee. 

Only the sturdy honesty of his customers 
sustained Banner, for his accounts were kept 
71 


72 


AT BUNNEKS. 


in a happy-go-lucky way that in any other 
place would long since have led him into hope¬ 
less bankruptcy. “Talking” was the real 
business at Bunner’s, and the musty old store, 
with its chaotic stock that had been accumu¬ 
lating for forty years, served simply as a field 
of operations. 

Bunner himself, thin and stoop-shouldered, 
his skin tanned into leather by half a century 
of unremitting ague, was a born news-collector. 
By an irony of fate one ear had been totally 
deafened in his soldier days by the passage of 
a shell, but the other seemed to have gained by 
the accident the sextuple power of a modern 
phonograph. 

“Half a gallon of molasses, Mrs. Reed? 
You want to trade for it in eggs. Wal, now, 
let me see. Eggs is so up and down they’re 
hard to count on; wal, say a dozen and a half, 
if that will suit you. Set down there on that 
sack of bran and rest yourself a bit, while I fill 
your jug. All things going well your way, 
ma’am, I hope? ” 

“I can’t complain,” and Mrs. Reed shut her 
lips with the air of one who declines to be 
drawn out. 


AT BUNNER^S. 


73 


“I am glad to hear it, ma’am, very glad. 
I saw young Tom galloping by so quick last 
night, I thought there might be something the 
matter at Highlands.” 

“The matter is, he is courting that Dennis 
girl, and I mean to put a stop to it,” said Mrs. 
Reed, thrown off her guard. 

“Maggie Deane! You don’t tell me so.! 
Maggie Deane 1 Now who would have thought 
it? Not that she isn’t a nice girl, Mrs. 
Reed.” 

“A nice girl, indeed!” sniffed the indignant 
mother. “I don’t know what you call a nice 
girl. A pert, overdressed piece, mincing about 
in her high-heeled slippers, when every one 
knows that her father peddled oysters up and 
down this shore when my father was sheriff 
of the county.” And the good woman, thus 
launched on a tide of family gossip, proceeded 
to recount Tom’s bewitchment to the Deane 
girl until the dozen and a half of eggs were for¬ 
gotten and the molasses-jug brimmed over at 
the barrel-spigot. But what were eggs and 
molasses to Mr. Bunner when he could retail 
the whole Reed-Deane complication on reliable 
authority to the next customer? 


74 


AT BUNNERS. 


“ The best of families will have their ups and 
downs/’ sighed Mr. Bunner sympathetically. 
“How much sugar was it Miss Wade ordered, 
Dick, my boy? Twenty-five pounds? Going 
to preserve, I suppose. Takes a heap of fixings 
one way or other for city boarders; but if any 
one can please finicky folks, it certainly is Miss 
Wade.” 

“Bob Bunner!” Mrs. Reed turned from 
her own woes with a gasp. “You don’t mean 
to tell me the Wades are taking boarders! ” 

“They are indeed, ma’am; and a fine thing 
it is for them when they can get millionaires 
with more money than they know what to do 
with to come and spend a little of it about here. 
The French valet was in here last night with an 
order such as I haven’t seen since I opened 
store, ma’am. Wax candles! Lucky I had 
two boxes put away since Judge Jessup’s 
wedding. Port wine! I laid in a dozen bot¬ 
tles or so when old Colonel Green’s cellar was 
sold at auction twenty years ago. French 
chocolate and sugar-wafers, and a dozen other 
things that I will have to order from Balti¬ 
more— ” 

“For goodness’ sake!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed 


AT BUNNER^S. 


75 


breathlessly. “Whatever brought people that 
can spend money like that down here? ” 

“The water, ma’am, the water. I’ve heard 
it told by most reliable authority that there’s 
enough lime and magnesia and such like biling 
away in the Playwater Springs to set up fifty 
apothecary shops. And the young chap that 
has all this money lies in a rolling chair all day 
and can’t move hand or foot. The doctors 
have sent him down here to see if the Playwater 
Springs will help him. Who knows but we 
may have a fashionable watering-place here 
yet?” 

Perched astride a flour-barrel by the door, 
Dick listened to old “Bunner’s buzz,” as the 
boys called it, very much as he would have 
listened to the drone of a blue bottle fly. But 
old Seth Bums, who had stopped for a pound 
of nails, and was leisurely stretching his lank 
limbs on a pile of grain-bags at Dick’s side, 
chuckled at the last words. “Does look a bit 
that way, sonny. Two gents in a buggy 
stopped me as I was riding home last night, 
and wanted to know which way was Playwater 
Farm, and if ye took boarders thar, and how 
many men they kept on the place, and all 


76 


AT BUNNER^S. 


about it, even to the horses and dogs. I said 
I couldn’t say much about men or beasts these 
days, but for kind, nice, fust-class ladies and 
good housekeepers the Misses Wade couldn’t 
be beat in the hull State, and I’d show ’em up 
to the place if they wanted to go thar. But 
they said no, they was only thinking of taking 
a little hunting trip later on and couldn’t stop 
now. Jest as well, too, I reckon,” continued 
old Seth, biting off a chew reflectively. 
“Couldn’t tell how or whar, but thar was 
something scampish about them chaps I didn’t 
like. Fine-dressed and soft-spoken enough, 
but I tell you, sonny, when a fellow lives for 
fifty years like I hev up in the hills he gets the 
ways of the wood critters, and feels when 
things and folks ain’t right. Jest as well you 
didn’t get them chaps at Play water.” 

“Yes, it is,” answered Dick bluntly. “ We’ve 
got all the boarders we can look out for 
now. Hallo!” and Dick sprang from his barrel 
delightedly as a brimless hat with a pink sun- 
bonnet bobbing beside it appeared far down the 
road. “There’s Ted at last, and he has Pat 
with him. I’m off, Mr. Bunner. Send up 
that sugar and coffee as soon as you can.” 


AT BUNNERS. 


77 


And Dick bounded off to complete the happy 
trio en route for St. Bride’s. 

“I wonder at Mrs. Jessup.” Mrs. Reed, 
standing with her dripping molasses-jug at 
the store door, looked after the pink sunbonnet 
disapprovingly. “She lets that little girl of 
hers run around like a tomboy with those 
yoimg Wades.” 

“She couldn’t be in better company,” said 
old Seth as he rose with a stretch of his gaunt 
limbs and pocketed his purchases. “Thar 
ain’t two finer little chaps in the county. Born 
gentlemen they are, like their father and 
grandfather was before ’em.” 

“They’ll have to come down like other 
folks,” said Mrs. Reed, whose temper had 
soured in the vain effort to sustain the family 
respectability of the late “sheriff.” “Every¬ 
body knows Playwater Farm is covered by 
all the mortgages it will hold now, and the 
Misses Wade could no more lift ’em than they 
could lift the earth. They ought to put those 
boys to an honest trade instead of letting them 
fool away their time with Latin and Greek at 
the Mission. But it’s none of my business.” 

“You’re right there, ma’am, jest right,” said 


78 


AT BUNKER'S. 


old Seth grimly, as he proceeded to tighten the 
saddle-girth of his old mare and remove the 
nose-bag in which she had been lunching luxu¬ 
riously for the last half-hour. “Tve alius 
found it ’bout ez much ez I could do to hoe my 
own row without harrying my neighbors.” 
And swinging himself upon old Peg’s back, the 
speaker turned away from this gossiping bit of 
the world, in deep disgust, and took the bridle¬ 
path that led to his own little log cabin far up 
on the river cliffs, where he lived alone with 
his dogs and gun, save when the city hunters 
came down in the autumn and made “Seth’s” 
their rallying-place, and the gaunt old woods¬ 
man their guide and leader along river and 
shore. 

What the lonely old man’s story was no one 
knew, and even Bunner had not thought it 
worth while to find out. But more than once 
of late Father Felix had noticed the brown, 
leathery face and grizzled head in a corner of 
his little church on Sunday, though old Seth 
had vanished before the good priest could 
speak a kindly word. “It was Dave brought 
him,” explained Brother Barry—“lame Dave 
that I made the crutches for, as ye know. 


AT BUNNER^S. 


79 


father. They are great friends, though Dave 
says the ould man is a hay thin out and out.” 

But Seth, “haythin” philosopher that he 
usually was, had been disturbed to-day. 
“Drat that buzz-mill of Bunner’s! It’s wuss 
than an old woman’s sewing-bee,” he muttered. 
“Dumed ef I don’t row ten miles down the 
river fur a plug of terbacker ruther than go 
thar again. To hear them all a-buzzing and 
a-blowing over the Playwater folks like they 
was so many bluebottles. Makes me sick,” 
growled the old man; and as if to escape more 
quickly from this buzzing, gossipy world, he 
turned from the bridle-path and plunged deep 
into the thicket and tangle of a short cut 
through the woods. It was a wild, sweet way 
he took, with the great arching trees making 
a twilight of the noonday, the birds chattering 
and twittering fearlessly in the leafy shadows, 
old Peg’s feet falling noiselessly on the soft, 
mossy earth. Here and there great vines, 
knotted from tree or thick growth of young 
pines, barred the way, and Peg had to nose 
around for passage. 

But suddenly, in the very depths of this 
seemingly untrodden solitude, there appeared 


8o 


AT BUNNERS. 


traces of human habitation. A stretch of 
crumbling wall, a weed-grown path bordered 
by a thicket of rose-bushes, hedges of box high 
as a full-grown man, and beyond, circled by 
overshadowing pines, an old, rambling, ruined 
house, dark, silent, ghostly even in the sum¬ 
mer noontide. As for the night, even Seth, 
bold “old haythin” that he was, would have 
ridden ten miles rather than pass Pinecroft 
after sunset. Long years ago it had been a 
beautiful and happy home, with fair gardens 
and groves stretching down by terraced paths 
to the river shore. But human passion and 
pride had found their way into this paradise; 
a cruel murder had been committed there, and 
the blight of ciime had been upon the spot ever 
since. The owners had moved away from the 
scene of tragedy; no one could be found to buy, 
rent, or live in or near the place, that at last 
became the unclaimed property of the State, 
while the wilderness closed about the old 
mansion, whose sturdy walls and timbers still 
defied the touch of time. 

That Pinecroft was “ha’nted” it is needless 
to say; the golden fruit of the Hesperides 
might have grown in its garden untouched by 


AT BUNNER'S. 


8i 


reckless hands. So gloomy were the tradi¬ 
tions of the place that even in daylight it was 
avoided. Only his careless short cut brought 
old Seth near its walls, and his well-seasoned 
nerves were conscious of an unmistakable 
“creep” when he caught the sound of a low 
voice behind the box hedge that concealed 
his approach. With the quick, cautious in¬ 
stinct of a woodsman he drew rein and listened. 

“About as dismal a hole as I ever put my 
foot in,” continued the voice. 

“Well, as I understand, we are not looking 
for a cheerful resort just now,” was the answer; 
and the old listener gave a start as his quick, 
well-trained ear recognized tones that he had 
lately heard with instinctive distrust. 

“Burned ef it ain’t them two scampish 
chaps I met yesterday,” he muttered as he 
drew Peg a trifle deeper into the shadow. 

“ It would have to be big stakes like those 
we are playing for that would keep one in a 
place like this two hours. Faugh! it’s a 
regular charnel-house,” said the first speaker. 

“It strikes me as just the place we want,” 
answered the other: “safe, silent, and not too 
far. We can’t risk anything serious, you 


82 


AT BUNNER^S. 


know. Delarne says we can count on the old 
lady paying up within twenty-four hours. And 
if there is any trouble, we are close to the river.” 

“Have your own way about it,” said the 
first speaker. “ I thought it was all plain 
sailing among these rustic simpletons here, but 
I tell you we will have to be careful. You 
talked altogether too much to that old man 
yesterday evening.” 

“That doddering old idiot we met on the 
road? ” laughed the other. 

“That doddering old idiot, I have learned, 
was old Seth Burns, the best shot and the 
keenest-eyed hunter on the river shore. All 
the young bloods in town swear by him.” 

“Bah! what of it? Brace up, man, you’re 
losing nerve.” 

“Gad! I believe I am. I haven’t got over 
the shock I had this morning when I saw those 
two darned little kids with Delarne’s note in 
their hands. If I had not come along when I 
did our game would have been up, for they 
would have whisked off to some one to puzzle 
it out for them. Looks as if something was 
working against us when kittens and kids take 
to blocking the game.” 


AT BUNNER'S. 


83 


“Pooh, pooh, man! you’ve got the chill of 
this old vault on you. Come out into the stm- 
light; we can do nothing more to-day, so we 
may as well go back to our boats, where I have 
a bottle of stuff that will bring back your lost 
spirit. Pluck is the word, man. We’ll be 
across the Atlantic with twenty-five thousand 
dollars in our pockets within two weeks if you 
keep your nerve. Come on.” 

The two speakers passed along the other 
side of the hedge and down the weed-choked 
road that had once led by flowery slopes and 
terraces to the river; while old Peg, obedient 
to the touch that told her master was watch¬ 
ing game, stood motionless, as if turned to 
stone. 

Not until the plash of oars came up from the 
river did old Seth emerge from his hiding-place 
in the pines. 

“Now I wonder what them chaps is fooling 
about these hills fur?” he muttered to Peg, 
who, from long habit, he made his confidante 
in perplexing situations. Peg could only prick 
up her right ear attentively. “I couldn’t 
ketch on to all that they was saying, but what 
we did hear, Peg, sounded cur’us, sure. Thar 


84 


AT BUNNER^S. 


was something about kids and kittens and 
twenty-five thousand dollars, and a deal more 
that I couldn’t make head or tail of, any more 
than them soap-puzzles that Dave is alius 
working over, trying fur a prize. And it don’t 
’pear to be our bizness anyhow. Peg,” concluded 
the old man with a quiet chuckle. “You and 
me is so used to hunting varmints that we 
can’t even let the two-legged kind go by with¬ 
out nosing around their trail. But I mean to 
keep my eyes peeled fur them chaps, if I ever 
see them ’round these here cliffs again. They 
ain’t a-going to board with those nice old 
ladies at Playwater if I can stop it. I don’t 
like their looks, or their talk neither. If they 
ain’t jail or gallows birds, it’s only because 
their wings ain’t full-feathered just yet.” 
And with his shaggy brows knit in a perplexed 
frown, old Seth gave a chirrup to Peg that 
quickened the long stride of her bony legs and 
sent her briskly on her homeward way. 


CHAPTER VII. 

A JUNE MORNING. 

Meanwhile the happy little pilgrims to 
St. Bride’s went on their merry way, no shad¬ 
ows of doubt or fear darkening the June sun¬ 
shine for them. Even Lear, forgetful of his 
years and dignity, was beguiled into a race 
down hill, while Fluff, cuddled safe under Pat’s 
arm, purred in peaceful oblivion of her recent 
misadventures. For the path to the old Mis¬ 
sion was full of delightful diversion on this 
bright summer morning, especially to Pat, 
who, not being a Catholic, seldom came this 
way with her boy playmates. The wild laurel 
was in roseate bloom, and the banks of the 
brook were starred with white violets. There 
was the queer old mill in the hollow, and old 
Nance sitting among the sunflowers at her 
cabin door. Though Nance was stone-blind 
and fully one hundred years old, she had nursed 
85 


86 A JUNE MORNING. 

Ted and Dick’s father and could not be passed 
unnoticed. 

“Good morning, Aunt Nance. How are 
you? ” they shouted. 

“Bress de Lord, it’s Marse Dick’s boys,” 
mumbled the old woman, tottering to her feet 
with the help of a knotted stick that served as 
a cane. “Come in, chillim, come in. Who is 
de little lady wif you?” her quick ear recog¬ 
nizing the rustle of Pat’s skirt. 

“It’s Pat—Pat Jessup, you know. Aunt 
Nance.” 

“Miss Mattie’s little girl. Lord, lord!”— 
Aunt Nance laid a trembling hand on Pat’s 
bonnet—“I’d never a known it. How you’ve 
growed, honey, how you hev growed 1 Set 
down, all of you chillun, and tell ole Nance 
how everybody is at Playwater. I hear you 
hev company folks thar.” 

“Not company—^boarders. Aunt Nance,” 
said Dick bluntly. 

“Shet up wif dat nonsense, chile,” said 
old Nance indignantly. “Boarders, ’deed! 
Ez if fust-class folks like mine would take 
boarders! Dey may hev company dat pays, 
but boarders! Sho, chile, you don’t know 


A JUNE MORNING. 


87 


what you’s talking ’bout. I suttinly is glad 
you come down to tell me ’bout dem, fur de 
fool niggahs ’roun’ hyah hez been making so 
much ’miration ’bout de rich city folks dat’s 
come to Play water. I can’t believe de half 
I hears. You Phoebe,” cried out Aunt Nance 
in shrill command, “take dat hoe-cake out ob 
de ashes, and fill up dat blue pitcher wif milk, 
and bring dese chillun suffin’ to eat. Sit 
down on de bench here, honeys, and tell ole 
Nance how all de folks at de big house is 
coming on.” 

And with the pleasing accompaniment of 
hoe-cake, spread with syrup, and rich milk 
from the old blue pitcher, the boys proceeded 
to tell the old woman all the news; Dick being 
spokesman, and Ted breaking in with explana¬ 
tions and additions drawn from his personal 
experience the day before. 

“De Lord!” exclaimed Aunt Nance at last. 
To think of folks a-rolling in millyons, and 
can’t straighten up a rackety chile! Pll lay I 
could make dat boy walk fas’ enough.” 

“You, Aunt Nance?” exclaimed Dick 
breathlessly. “Why, he’s had half the doc¬ 
tors in the coimtry/’ 


88 


A JUNE MORNING. 


“Sho!” said Aunt Nance scornfully. “Doc¬ 
tors don’t know nuffin ’bout rackets. Books 
don’t teach folks nuffin ’bout rackets.” 

“What is rackets, Aunt Nance? ” asked Ted. 

“I ain’t a-saying what dey is,” said Aunt 
Nance mysteriously; “dar’s some tings dat 
ain’t fur anybody but ole misses like me to 
know. But I kin cure ’em. Dar was ole 
Colonel Lightfoot’s little gal dat de white folks 
was kerrying ’roun’ on a pillow when she was 
two years old, till ole marse hired me out dar 
as nuss. I had dat chile chasing ’roun’ de 
place frisky as a rabbit in three months, an’ 
she done libbed to see her great-grandchillim. 
Dar was Judge Grayson’s young Marse Jack, 
pining an’ peaking fur ten years or mo’. Dey 
sent him up to Playwater, honey, in your 
grandfather’s time, wif two niggahs to wait 
on him an’ kerry him ’roun’—couldn’t set his 
foot to de groun’.” 

“And did you cure him. Aunt Nance?” 
asked Dick eagerly. 

“Cure him!” echoed Nance. “Dat I did, 
chile. In six months dat boy was ebbery- 
where. Dar wasn’t a wilder or wusser boy 
in de whole county.’’ 


A JUNE MORNING, 


89 


“And—and—do you think you could cure 
Lester, Aunt Nance?” asked Ted, his blue eyes 
opened wide with wonder. 

“ Dat I can’t say, chile,” replied Aunt Nance 
with a doubtful shake of her turbaned head. 
“Dat I dussn’t say. I’s weak now, an’ I’s 
blind, an’ I’s close to a hundred years old.” 

“You might come up to Play water and try,” 
suggested Dick. “They would pay you— 
gee whiz!—anything.” 

“I doesn’t work fur pay, chile,” said Aunt 
Nance impressively. “An’ I doesn’t work fur 
pride, an’ I doesn’t work fur folks to know an’ 
see. An’ I ain’t able to shuffle ’long over dese 
hills no more. But ef you’ll bring dat boy up 
hyah. I’ll try what I can do fur him. I’s got 
plenty of yarbs an’ roots yet a-dying in dar in 
de kitchen rafters. I ain’t no common niggah 
like dese black folks ’roun’ he^'e now,” con¬ 
tinued Aunt Nance loftily. “My ole mammy 
was an Injun, an’ her father was de big medi¬ 
cine-man ob de tribe. Lord, Lord, chillun, I 
could tell you stories of dat big medicine-man 
dat would riz your ha’r on end.” 

“Tell us. Aunt Nance, please, please,” 
pleaded an eager chorus. 


90 


A JUNE MORNING. 


“I can’t, chillun, I dussn’t.” Aunt Nance 
shook her turbaned head solemnly. “Ts been 
to camp-meeting an’ I’s got religion, bress de 
Lord, an’ I’s put dat big medicine-man behind 
me wif all his works. But my ole mammy was 
Injun to de last. All de parsons in de place 
couldn’t git her on de mourners’ bench. An’ 
she could read de stars and de leaves, an’ de 
running waters. She taught me a heap ob 
tings I dussn’t tell—a heap ob tings, chillun, 
I nebber dare tell—nebber, nebber dare tell.” 
The old woman’s voice died off in a low drone, 
and her head sank upon her breast as she dozed 
off in the warm sunshine; for at one hundred 
years life is nearly all a dream. 

“Done gone off agin,” said young Phoebe, 
peering out of the door at her grandmother. 
“Mos’ too peart this morning to stay awake 
long.” 

“Won’t—won’t she tumble out of her 
chair?” asked Dick pitifully, surveying the 
nodding old woman. 

“Lord, no,” answered Phoebe laughing. 
“She doze off dat way sort ob mumbling and 
jumbling all day. Skeers some folks; dey 
’low de speerrits is a-talking to her; but it 


A JUNE MORNING. 


91 


don’t skeer me. Going, young marses? Don’t 
be in a hurry; hev some more hoe-cake and 
milk.” 

“No,” answered Dick. “Thank you very 
much, Phoebe, but we have to go now,” and 
they turned away somewhat briskly from the 
little cabin and its queer old mistress. 

“Oh, I would be afraid of Aunt Nance,” said 
Pat, drawing a long breath as they safely 
passed out of the whitewashed gate. “She 
looks just like the witch in my fairy-tale book, 
Dick.” 

“Pooh!” said Dick stoutly, “I hope you 
don’t believe in witches or fairies, Pat.” 

“N-no,” said Pat with some hesitation. 
“ Because it’s a sin if you do,” said Ted decid¬ 
edly. “Father Felix says so. He is preach¬ 
ing to the colored people about it all the time.” 

“My mammy was hoodooed once,” said 
Pat. “ She had a black snake grow round her 
heart, and it nearly killed her.” 

“Pat Jessup! you don’t believe any such 
story as that! ” 

“Yes, I do,” answered Pat. “My mammy 
wouldn’t tell a story for the world, Dick Wade. 
She couldn’t, because she waded out in Plum- 


92 


A JUNE MORNING. 


mer’s Creek when they had to break the ice 
for the baptizing, and she got religion and was 
so happy that she shouted and jumped so the 
minister could scarcely hold her up, and she 
was nearly drowned.” 

‘'Gee! What did she go out in ice-water 
for? ” asked Ted, his blue eyes open wide in 
wonder at such novel ministrations. 

“She says ice-water is the strongest,” an¬ 
swered Pat simply. “Mam said she felt her 
sins rolling right off her into the creek and 
sweeping away. And she has never done any¬ 
thing bad since, so she wouldn’t tell a story 
about the hoodoo—I know she wouldn’t.” 

“Then somebody fooled her,” said Dick. 
“ No person with any sense believes in hoodoos, 
Pat.” 

“Yes, they do,” answered mammy’s loyal 
nursling, her pretty cheeks flushed with earnest¬ 
ness. ‘ ‘ My mamma believes, too, or she wouldn’t 
have given mam twenty dollars to pay the 
witch-woman down in Walcott Swamp.” 

“ Twenty dollars 1 to a witch-woman! ” echoed 
Dick in horror. 

“Yes. I ought not to have told,” said Pat 
with quivering lip. “Mamma told me I must 


A JUNE MORNING. 


93 


not tell; but she could not have poor mammy 
driven distracted, so she took all the money 
she had for a new dress and gave it to her. 
And mammy took it to the witch-woman, and 
then she made her lie down on a bed of cedar 
twigs, and she gave her something to drink, 
while she built a fire of graveyard wood on the 
hearth and set the spell boiling over it. And 
mam went to sleep for a whole day and night— 
it took all that time for the witch-woman to 
break the hoodoo.” 

“And did she break it?” eagerly asked Ted, 
quite forgetful for the time of Father Felix’s 
teaching in his interest in mam’s story. 

“Yes,” answered Pat. “When mam woke 
up, the black snake was lying dead in the wood- 
ashes.” 

Pat had delivered this narration with such 
an air of conviction that Dick felt argument 
would be useless. With “mamma” and 
“mammy” both on her side Pat would defy 
all the theology and philosophy on earth. 
Happily, by the time the black snake was dis¬ 
posed of, the children were close to the Mission 
gate. 

Brother Barry was propping up the big pear- 


94 


A JUNE MORNING. 


tree whose branches, weighed down with fruit, 
hung over the stone wall. Brother Barry was 
little and weazened and old, but there was a 
merry twinkle in his eye that forty years of 
religious life had failed to dim. 

“Come in, come in,” he said cheerily. 
“ Father Felix told me ye would be along after 
the currants this morning. Fll be wid yez as 
soon as I get these cholera-balls propped out of 
the little naygurs’ rache; they feed on them 
as if they were praties. What kapes the little 
craythurs from being kilt entirely God only 
knows.” 

“Gee! the trees are full this year,” said Ted, 
looking up at the heavy branches. 

“They are,” answered Brother Barry with a 
smile of great satisfaction, for the Mission 
garden was the pride of his heart. “Though 
for the matter of that they always give us all 
we want and more. And the grapes! You 
should see the grapes this year. As Father 
Benedict, God rest his soul, used to say, St. 
Bride’s always seemed to him like the Garden 
of Eden before man’s fall.” 

And in truth a tender benediction seemed 
to rest on the dim, sweet, shadowy place that 


A JUNE MORNING. 


95 


even little Protestant Pat felt. “Let us sit 
down and rest under this tree,” she said as they 
reached a big oak encircled by an old rustic 
bench. “Oh, isn’t it nice here and good? 
It’s the nicest place I was ever in, Dick.” And 
Pat found no reason, as the blithe day wore 
on, to change her mind. Father Felix had 
gone down the river on a sick-call, but Brother 
Barry was all that could be asked in a 
host. 

After his guests had filled their baskets, and 
feasted as well on currants and cherries, they 
found a more substantial luncheon spread on a 
little table in the grape-arbor: biscuit, cold 
chicken, and sugar-cakes, honey, and cream. 
Then, as the noonday sun felt hot even upon 
these shaded heights, and old Lear, panting as 
he lay outstretched on the soft grass, warned 
them that it was no time for a homeward 
tramp, the boys begged Brother Barry for a 
story. 

“A story is it?” An’ what should a poor 
ould lay brother like me know about stories?” 
said Brother Barry with the smile that wrinkled 
his face from ear to ear. 

“Ob, but you do,” said Ted, and Dick ea- 


96 


A JUNE MORNING. 


gerly. “He knows splendid stories, Pat, and 
they are all true—aren’t they. Brother Barry? ” 

“An’ sure ye wouldn’t have me telling ye 
lies?” was the old man’s reply. 

“Pat has never heard any stories like 
yours,” continued Ted persuasively. 

“No; I never heard a real true story in my 
life,” added Pat. 

“Ye poor innocent!” said Brother Barry, 
looking pitifully at the pretty, cherry-stained 
face and tangled curls of this little stray lamb. 
“Ye niver heard of the holy saints and 
martyrs? ” 

“No,” said Pat. “What is martyrs?” 

“The Lord save us!” murmured Brother 
Barry, shaking his head. Then, as if inspired 
by sudden resolve, he added briskly: “Sit ye 
down here, then, on the grass where it is cool 
and soft, and I’ll tell ye a story, a true story. 
It’s about—about—well, never mind. I’ll nam.e 
no names, but every word is the truth. An’ 
when I tell it ye’ll know”—Brother Barry 
paused, seeking rotmd in his simple mind for 
words that could reach the untaught little 
innocent whose bright eyes were lifted so 
eagerly to his face—“that martyr manes one 


^ JUNE MORNING. 


97 


who loves God so much that he is willing and 
ready, ay, and glad, too, to die in His service.” 
And with his three young listeners gathered 
around his knees. Brother Barry began his 
story. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

BROTHER Barry’s story. 

“Ye know where China is? ” began Brother 
Barry. 

“Eastern part of Asia,” answered Pat 
promptly. 

“ East or west, it’s the divil’s own counthry,” 
continued the old man, nodding. “God for¬ 
give me for the wurrud, for, as we know, ’tis 
He that rules everywhere; but if, as we’re 
towld, the divil roams through the ’arth like a 
roaring lion. I’m sure it’s in China he makes 
his headquarters. Haven’t they the very 
picthur of him on their flag? ” Mebbe ye’ve 
seen it—a great black and yellow baste with 
wings and horns, the very picthur of him that 
the blessed St. Michael but undher his foot. 
It’s the murthering bad place, this same China, 
and ye may bless God, children, that ye’ll 
never see it, and that it’s thousands of leagues 
from ye across the sea.” 


BROTHER BARRY'S STORY. 


99 


“Were you ever there, Brother Barry?” 
asked Pat, who, with Fluff cuddled close in her 
arms, sat a breathless listener at the old man’s 
feet. 

“Niver, thank God!” answered Brother 
Barry fervently. “Though I ought not to 
say that, for it might have been the short road 
to heaven for me, and maybe a blessed martyr’s 
crown at the end; but such glory is not for a 
poor lay brother like me. But it’s the story of 
one that was there I am telling ye now. He 
was young and brave and bowld, wid father 
and mother and home, and money enough to 
kape him a gintleman till the end of his days. 
But he left all for the love of God, that he 
might preach His holy truth to the poor hay- 
thin that were living and dying in the divil’s 
hold. So John—as we will call him, though 
that isn’t the name—became a priest and a 
missionary, and was sent off to China when 
the divil’s work there was at its worst. It’s 
only betimes he rages; then the power of God 
puts him down, and he has to lie still like a 
black baste that can only growl and show his 
teeth. 

“ It was many a year that holy Church had 


L.ofC. 


lOO 


BROTHER BARRTS STORY, 


been battling wid him in China. There’s books 
within the Mission here that tells how there 
were priests and churches and missions there 
more than twelve hundred years ago.” 

“How did they get there?” asked Dick in 
some surprise. 

“How?” exclaimed Brother Barry. “Sure 
I wonder at a Catholic Christian instructed like 
you asking such a question. When did ever 
ocean or mountain or river, divil or emperor 
or king, stop thim that set out in the name of 
God to do His will? Look at your own coun- 
thry. How did Columbus and the cross of 
Christ come here?” 

“Queen Isabella helped him,” said Pat with 
a wise nod. 

“She did,” replied Brother Barry. “But it 
was for the glory of God and to spread the faith 
among the hay thin, not for gold and silver he 
came. And so it was with the holy men that 
in all the years back went to China to plant the 
faith there. Now it was peace, now it was 
war wid them, as the ould black dhragon chose 
to lick or scratch. But whatever it was, the 
bowld soldiers of Christ kept on the same, land¬ 
ing by stealth or compliment as it chanced to 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


lOI 


them, braving rods and chains and prison and 
tortures and death to preach God’s holy word. 

“And as I said, when Father—Father John 
landed there the divil was at his worst. In the 
great cities it was not so bad, for they had to 
kape up a show of dacincy to civilized nations; 
lest they should lose thrade; but away off 
in the provinces and villages no priest dared 
show himself, nor any poor craythur call himself 
a Christian or the mandarins, as the head divils 
called themselves, would be afther thim tooth 
and nail like ravening bastes. Bastes, do I 
say? Worse than bastes; a dacint lion or tiger 
was a gintleman to thim. Wid the lion it’s a 
clap and a snap, and ye’re done for; but wid 
the mandarin it was how long he could kape 
you trimbling and suffering in the jaws of 
death. Father—Father John knew this well, 
for sure it was no sthrange sthory in the Church. 
He had read of the cages and the cangues—’’ 

“Pat doesn’t know what cages and cangues 
mean. Brother Barry,’’ suggested Ted. 

“Sure I forgot the poor child doesn’t,” said 
Brother Barry pitifully. “And it’s no fault 
of yours, you poor little innocent, that the 
stories of saint and martyr are sthrange to ye. 


102 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


So ril explain to ye what these boys well know. 
Prison and chain are not bad enough for the 
blessed martyrs in China, so the mandarins 
put them in cangue and cage. The cangue is 
a wooden collar, weighing fifty pounds or more, 
that the divils put around their prisoners’ necks, 
and then shut them up in a cage where all can 
stare and mock at thim as if they were wild 
bastes in a show. And whin, by the grace of 
God, they bear that there’s a dale worse to 
come. They are brought out and towld to 
trample on the holy cross itself; and whin they 
won’t do it they are b ’aten and tortured as only 
divils can bate and torture Christian men, 
and thin it’s the cage and cangue again, and 
the thrial and the torture, until how they live at 
all until the blessed day of martyrdom comes 
no mortal tongue can tell. 

“All this Father Fe—Father John knew well, 
but sorra a bit did it chill the holy zeal burning 
in his harrut or the bowld sojer spirit in his 
breast. He studied the language until the 
greatest scholar in the country was a fool to him, 
and he could rade and write it as if he were a 
hay thin bom. And thin whin the big ship 
that tuk him over reached the Chinese shore, 


BROTHER BARRY'S STORY. 


103 

he put off by himself in a small boat, and made 
his way up the rivers and creeks into the very 
thickest of the fight, where the churches were 
being burned, and the Christians scattered, 
and the priests driven into hiding or dragged 
to tortures and death. And there he lived for 
years, and all that he did it would take, childer, 
a dozen books to tell. 

“Sometimes he would be for days hiding in 
the bushes and swamps, or paddling in his 
little boat up the rivers to the house of some 
faithful Christian, where he would say Mass 
and hear confessions, at the risk of all their 
lives. Thin, again, with his face stained yel¬ 
low, and dhressed in silk coat and pigtail like 
the rest, he would play the docthor in a little 
town or village, and so make his way to the 
poor sick and dying craythurs wid the last 
blessings of the Church. And more than 
wanst, in the same haythin dress, he was let 
into the cages and prisons of the holy martyrs 
before they were taken out to die. So it wint 
on for five years or more, and though there was 
prison and torture and death on every side of 
him. Father John wint on his way as if some 
angel guardian made it his business to kape 


104 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


him from hurt or harrum. The very divil him¬ 
self seemed to give in to him, for the manda¬ 
rin’s young son, who had heard of the Christian 
meetings, stole off to them wid one of his 
mates, and was converted and baptized. 

“ But the ind came at last. Wan day he 
was bethrayed like his Masther by a Judas 
that wanted the reward offered for thim that 
found the Christian praste, and he was tuk 
by the sojers and carried before the man¬ 
darin, and put in chain and cangue like the 
holy men that had gone afore him to their 
crown. Musha, musha! it was thin the divil 
began his wurruk in airnest. The times he 
was dhragged out of his cage and put to thrial, 
as they called it, I cannot tell ye, childer. He 
was bid to thrample on the blessed cross and 
deny his Lord, to tell who and where the faith¬ 
ful Christians were that had given him food 
and shelter. And whin he would do naither, 
he was stretched and tied with heavy rods, 
and his poor flesh tom, and his bones broke, 
until to this very day, childer— Arrah, what 
is it I am saying? ” 

Brother Barry’s voice, that had been shaking 
suspiciously, broke suddenly into a sob, and 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


105 

Pat, little Pat, who had been following the 
narrator’s every word with parted lips and 
widening eyes, burst into a very wail of woe. 

“Oh, don’t tell me any more. I can’t bear 
to hear any more’’—and the little speaker 
sprang to her feet sobbing and trembling— 
‘ ‘ unless — unless ’ ’ — and her voice quivered 
hopefully — “unless poor Father John got 
away. Oh, please say God let him get away, 
Brother Barry.’’ And then Pat looked up 
with a start, for a thin hand was laid gently 
upon her curls. 

“Poor little girl!” said Father Felix, who 
had drawn near the children unobserved. 
“We must not break such tender hearts with 
sad stories, Brother Barry. Yes, Father John 
got away. Tell the dear little child how, my 
friend.” 

But a sudden confusion seemed to have 
fallen upon the good lay brother. “Sure I 
couldn’t afore ye, father,” he faltered. “Meb- 
be ye will finish the sthory yerself.” 

Father Felix sat down on the bench and 
drew little Pat and her kitten to his side. 
And as he softly stroked back the curls from 
her tearful face, Dick, who had risen and stood 


io6 BROTHER BARRY'S STORY. 

close to him, noted the lines and ridges that 
marred the shapely beauty of his hands, the 
strange red scars on his wrists, which long 
falling sleeves usually hid from view. And 
being quick at figures, Dick began to put two 
and two together most conclusively as Father 
Felix continued: “Yes, Father John got away, 
my dear child. You see he was far too old a 
Chinese fox to be held by chain or cangue, or 
perhaps not worthy of the martyr’s crown.” 

“God save us!” murmured Brother Barry 
appealingly. 

“It was little Ching Loo who saved him,” 
continued Father Felix. “Did Brother Barry 
tell you of little Ching Loo, the mandarin’s 
son? Though not as old as Dick here, he had 
the wit and wisdom of twice his years in his 
funny little shaved head with its long pigtail. 
And when Ching Loo got a purpose in that 
head, nothing could shake him, though the 
round yellow face and little black beads of eyes 
told no tales of what was working within. 

“Ching Loo was a Christian, and so was his 
mother, as, by the grace of God, many even in 
the mandarin’s palaces had become in secret. 
Ah! these Chinese are past masters at keeping 


BROTHER BARRY'S STORY, 


107 


things secret. And so when Ching Loo found 
his white master, as he called him, in cangue 
and chain, not a wink of his black eyes told his 
grief, though all the time his young heart was 
aching and his quick brain working for that 
master’s sake. 

“One day when Father John had rather a 
hard time of it and was very faint and weary, 
Ching Loo brought him some soup. His 
mother had made it, he whispered, to soothe 
the ‘white master’s’ pains. And the white 
master, who was very weak, drank it, as he 
believed the good God willed he should to up¬ 
hold his failing strength. Then he fell asleep 
in spite of pain and wounds, and cangue and 
cage—asleep like a little child on its mother’s 
' breast. 

“And how long that sleep lasted he never 
knew; but when he woke he was far away, in 
the house of a faithful Christian, who told him 
that he had been found in his cage, as all near 
him supposed, dead, and that, in terror lest 
some punishment should fall upon him, the 
mandarin ordered his servants to cast the body 
into a pit far away. 

“ But, maybe as you guess, Ching Loo and 


io8 BROTHER BARRTS STORY. 


his mother saw about that. For they had 
drugged the soup, as both the wise and wicked 
Chinese know how to drug it, with an herb that 
produces sleep akin to death, and they had 
bribed the servants who carried away Father 
John to his faithful Christians, and so he was 
stolen off into safety and lost his martyr’s 
crown.” 

“Lost it!” almost sobbed good Brother 
Barry. “Shure if ye knew all, childer, it’s 
down on yer knees ye would be this minnit, 
asking a saint’s blessing.” 

“Tut, tut! ” said Father Felix, rising hastily, 
‘you forget. Brother Barry, you forget. Are 
your baskets filled, boys, and has this dear 
little girl her share? I don’t think I know her 
name.” 

“It’s Pat, father,” said Ted. “Pat Jessup. 
You know her father, the Judge.” 

“Ah, yes, yes,”—Father Felix stroked Pat’s 
tangled curls softly, as if he were petting a 
little stray lamb—“Judge Jessup’s little girl. 
So it is her first visit to St. Bride’s. We must 
give her brighter memories of it than Brother 
Barry’s story. Come, I will show you my 
pictures.” And, still holding Pat’s hand, he 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


log 


led the way up the box-bordered path to the 
great front-door that opened into the wide hall 
of the Mission house, and thence into a big 
bright room, whose walls were lined with books 
almost to the ceiling. There were no carpets 
or easy-chairs or curtains, such as Pat’s father 
had in his library, but the light streamed 
through two arched windows, beyond which 
the sunflowers nodded gayly and the hill sloped ' 
down to the shining river that stretched on 
either side of this wooded point far into the 
glittering distance. And directly in front of 
one of these windows stood a tall stereoscope 
to which Father Felix led his little guests. 

“ Now we will beat Jules Verne,” he said gayly: 
“we will go around the world in less than eighty 
minutes.” 

And perched on a high chair, with her bright 
eyes to the peep-holes, Pat proceeded around 
the world with Father Felix as guide. She 
saw the great ocean steamer as it left port; 
the wide stretches of sunlit waves, with other 
vessels in the distance; the whales, the ice¬ 
bergs, the moonlight on the waters, the pleas¬ 
ant scenes on deck and in cabin—all the 
charming details of an ocean voyage. Then 


I lO 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


came the coasts of Ireland, the great cliffs of 
the Giant’s Causeway looming up against the 
sky; the cabins, the villages, the churches of 
the Isle of Saints; England’s lordly castles 
and old cathedrals; London, Oxford, Chester, 
and Windsor. Pat even had a peep into the 
royal nursery, and saw the little princes gath¬ 
ered around the knee of the still beautiful 
grandmother queen. Then came France and 
Spain, and Switzerland with its fair lakes and 
wonderful mountains; Italy, where Father Fe¬ 
lix was a guide indeed, so much could he tell 
of church and palace and catacomb. Pat 
looked in breathless wonder at St. Peter’s, 
and saw the Pope seated in the garden of the 
Vatican. 

She had read of “Giant Pope” in her “Pil¬ 
grim’s Progress,” and it was something of a 
shock to see that Protestant bugaboo in the 
gentle, white-robed old man seated among his 
vines and flowers. “He doesn’t look bad,” 
said Pat softly to herself; and Father Felix, 
who had caught the whispered words, smiled 
and, showing a pretty view of a mountain 
castle, began to tell the story of the noble 
young Pecci who was bom there; of his tender 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


Ill 


love for his mother; of the wisdom, the good¬ 
ness, the courage, and the charity that had led 
him upward step by step to the highest dignity 
on earth. ‘'For Pope means ‘father,’ my 
little child, and it is as our ‘holy father’ this 
great man is loved and blessed all over the 
world.” 

And Pat listened wonderingly, and new 
thoughts came into her childish head, that 
were to grow and blossom as the years went by, 
imtil they ripened into the full and perfect 
Faith that was to bless her after-life. 

Many more pictures Father Felix showed his 
little guests: ruined temples of Egypt, scenes 
in Turkey and India, pleasant pictures of tea- 
gardens, palaces, and pagodas in China and 
Japan. So blithely did the moments fly that 
the sunset was reddening the west when, with 
a last view of the rainbow-arched Falls of 
Niagara, Father Felix announced their world- 
journey was done. 

“Oh, it has been lovely!” exclaimed Pat 
with a long-drawn breath of delight, as she 
hopped down from the high chair and picked 
up Fluff, who had been peacefully reposing in 
her pink sunbonnet. ‘‘It’s been the loveliest 


II2 


BROTHER BARRY^S STORY. 


day I ever had in my life. May I see in the 
little church before I go? I have never seen 
a Pope’s church,” added Pat with new interest. 

And so, in the soft glow of the summer sun¬ 
set, Pat found herself for the first time before 
the altar. The colored light falling through 
the one stained window in the little sanctuary, 
the tapers, the roses, the trembling beam of 
the little lamp, all were strange to her wonder¬ 
ing eyes. But wonder changed into a sweet, 
trembling awe as her gaze fell on Father Felix 
kneeling before the tabernacle. The look on 
the pale, worn, uplifted face struck some chord 
untouched before in the childish heart. Im¬ 
pulsively she fell on her knees at his side. 
And as she knelt there, the old priest rose and 
laid his hand upon her head in solemn bene¬ 
diction; and though Pat little guessed it, she 
was given to God that sunset hour for life. 

Dick was strangely silent that evening as 
the children hurried over the rosy hills on 
their homeward way. Ted and Pat had all 
the fun to themselves until the little girl was 
left safe at her father’s door. Then, as the 
brothers turned homeward through the dark¬ 
ening woods, Dick found voice. 


BROTHER BARRYB STORY. 


113 

“Ted,” he said slowly, “if I tell you some¬ 
thing, you must keep it secret forever and 
ever. ” 

“Honest Indian, I will, Dick,” replied Ted 
earnestly. 

“Brother Barry let the cat out of the bag 
without meaning it, Ted. Father Felix wouldn’t 
have us know it, but it was his story we heard 
to-day.” 

“His story! ” exclaimed Ted staring. 

“Yes,” said Dick. “I caught on, though 
you and Pat didn’t. That dear old teacher 
of mine is a saint and a martyr. Did you 
never notice how his hands are scarred ? 
Father Felix is Father John,"' 


CHAPTER IX. 


A WAKING UP. 

It had been a weary day for Lester. New 
scenes and new faces, the arrival and unpack¬ 
ing of his treasures, simple Ted’s wonder and 
admiration, had filled his first day at Play- 
water with some interest, but now all things 
had palled. The rough, merry boys were off, 
bent on fun, in which he could have no share, 
his mother was lying down with the headache 
of utter ennui: to her Playwater Farm was 
boredom unspeakable. 

Lester’s Eiffel Tower and electric cars had 
lost their charm, and Victor, after the egg epi¬ 
sode of the morning, was as sullen as a young 
millionaire’s valet dares to be. The rolling 
chair was wheeled up and down the porch 
through the garden-walks to the gate with the 
maddening regularity of imwilling service, 
while the hot stillness of the summer day deep- 


A WAKmC UP. 


ened and only tlie dull drone of the insects and 
the ceaseless song of the playing waters broke 
the noonday hush. 

“Roll me under the big tree there and let 
me rest,” said Lester at last, peevishly. “You 
are so stupid, Victor. Albert, who was with 
us last year, could amuse me half the day at 
a time.” 

“Monsieur should have kept Albert, then,” 
answered Victor shortly. 

“Couldn’t. He stole money from mamma, 
and my watch, and ran away,” said Lester. 
“But he told funny stories, and knew games 
and songs, and could play the jew’s-harp. 
But you can do nothing, nothing to make it 
lively for me.” 

“No, monsieur”—a strange lOok came into 
the heavy-lidded black eyes—“not yet, per¬ 
haps; but I will learn. Some day I will make 
it lively for monsieur too.” 

“I wish you would,” said Lester languidly, 
“for this is a very dull place. I am tired of 
it already.” 

“If madame would permit,” said Victor, 
his eyes and voice growing eager, “ I could take 
monsieur into the woods beyond, where the 


A WAKING UP, 


ii6 

waters leap, and down the road to the river. 
Monsieur could sit on the rocks and fish until 
we get a boat.” 

“Then I will ask mamma to-morrow,” 
answered Lester. “Only the other boys must 
come too, Victor. I would not go fishing with 
a dull fellow like you alone. We will take the 
other boys, and have a basket packed with 
lunch and make a picnic of it in the woods. And 
perhaps Dick will take his gun and let me shoot.” 

Victor’s face fell. The boys and the gun 
were evidently parts of the programme not 
to his mind. 

“Ah, I would be afraid of that, monsieur, 
very much afraid,” he said hastily. “You 
might get hurt. And these country boys are 
so wild, so rough; never have I seen greater 
young savages. Think how they turned the 
water on you the day that you came. Mise- 
ricorde! it might have killed you.” 

“But it didn’t, you see; it didn’t hurt me a 
bit, ’ ’ answered ‘ ‘ monsieur ’ ’ quite gayly. ‘ ‘ But 

oh, what a swish, what a rush it was! And 
the doctor and poor mamma! ” Lester burst 
into a ringing laugh that quite electrified his 
attendant, it was so boyish and natural. 


A WAKING UP. 


117 

“It was horrible. Madame has not recov¬ 
ered from the shock yet. Monsieur, never 
could I consent to take you out with these 
wild boys,” continued Victor virtuously. 
“They might turn you over on the rocks or 
into the river in their rough sport, and mine 
would be the blame, the r-r-responsibility. 
My char-r-racter ”—^Victor rolled his r’s most 
impressively—“would be gone for-r-rever, 
monsieur.” 

“Ah, that would be bad,” said Lester dryly. 
“ I do not know which is worse, Victor, to have 
a valet with a good character or, like Albert> 
without one.’’ And having reached the shadow 
of the big trees beneath which the spring bub¬ 
bled up under their broken arches, Lester had 
his chair-back lowered to a comfortable angle, 
and, pillowed on cushions of silk and down, 
the young millionaire prepared to indulge in 
a luxurious siesta. 

But sleep would not come. A thousand 
restless thoughts and fancies seemed fluttering 
through Lester’s mind to-day. Was it the 
voice of old Sweet bubbling up in merry music 
beside him that gurgled of the sunny hillsides 
and the shining river, of silvery fish leaping 


ii8 


A WAKING UP. 


to hook and line, of trees to be climbed, and 
rocks to be scrambled, and wide, cool waves 
that might be waded and splashed by bare 
young feet? 

Ted had told him of all this yesterday. 
Dick had given him wider boyish knowledge 
last night. Both had turned indifferently from 
his costly toys and games to tread the para¬ 
dise of boyhood closed forever to his help¬ 
less feet. 

But old Sweet was singing to-day, a song 
of hope and cheer, as he leaped up through the 
broken stones and, bursting all bounds, went 
foaming and dashing down the hill. So cheery 
was the music that Lester’s languid frame 
seemed to thrill and tingle to the sound, and 
fancy grew wilder and brighter. Why should 
he sit here bound and helpless, when all things 
else were glad and free—when even lame Dave, 
with “legs worse than his,” was springing 
blithely over the hills? If he could only steal 
away for one gay hour, and creep, roll, tum¬ 
ble like the poor little boys who had neither 
Victors nor invalid chairs nor prospective 
millions! If he could borrow Dave’s crutches 
and try how they worked; if. he could only have 


A WAKING UP. 


119 

one merry frolic with Dick and Ted on the hills 
and the river! 

Ah, old Sweet’s spell was upon Lester al¬ 
ready; the glad, daring spirit of boyhood was 
beginning to waken in his breast, new life to 
stir in his languid frame. 

When the boys came home that evening after 
having left Pat and Fluff safe at Jessup Manor, 
they found Lester awaiting them at the gate 
with bright welcome in his eyes, curious and 
eager to hear where they had been and all that 
they had done. The ripest currants and cher¬ 
ries were put upon Lester’s plate for supper, 
and Brother Barry’s story retold that evening 
while Dick and Ted and Lear gathered around 
the rolling chair under the big oak. In short, 
despite the great gulf of difference that yawned 
between them, Lester and his young hosts, 
with the ingenuousness of boyhood, were grow¬ 
ing “chums.” 

Dick and Ted found that there were things 
that even Lester could do. Victor brought out 
mandolin and banjo at his young master’s 
bidding, and the delicate hands touched the 
strings into music that held the listeners 
breathless with delight. And Lester had stor- 


120 


A WAKING UP, 


ies to tell, too. Not of hunting and fishing 
indeed, but very fairy tales of wonder to the 
simple boys whose lives had been boimded by 
their own river and forest. He had seen the 
orange-groves of Florida, the mighty redwoods 
of California, the marvels of Niagara and the 
Yosemite. He had seen the elephants, lions, 
camels, and leopards of a dozen zoos. He had 
travelled in his private car across the Rockies, 
sailed in his own yacht from Maine to the Gulf. 

“He isn’t such a baby girl after all,” said 
Dick that night when he and Ted rolled into 
their little nest imder the farmhouse eaves. 

“Baby girl! You can bet he isn’t,” an¬ 
swered Ted emphatically. “I tell you, Dick, 
if he only had a pair of Brother Barry’s 
crutches he would be a first-class boy.” 

And this was the beginning of things that 
filled the model Victor with deep disgust. His 
genteel attendance was at an end; the rolling 
chair no longer went on its proper round over 
lawn and garden path, but must be wheeled 
to stable, to barnyard, to pasture, wherever, 
within reach of the house, the boys’ bare brown 
feet led. Lester must see Dick milk the cows, 
and Ted feed the downy yoimg chickens; he 


A WAKINC UP. 


I2I 


must know how the old hens made their nests 
in the sweet-smelling hay; he must follow over 
the stubbly ground when Ted gathered beans 
and tomatoes in the kitchen-garden, and watch 
Dick pick the apples for the dinner potpie. 
And when the morning work was done Victor 
must lift him on his Persian rug to the soft grass 
under the shadow of the old oak, and bring 
down his favorite games for his new comrades’ 
amusement, while they all feasted royally on 
Aunt Beth’s fresh gingerbread and rich milk. 

“Ze little devil!” muttered Victor under his 
breath, as he mopped his face before sitting 
down with Fifine to their own midday limcheon 
in the little breakfast-room that was their 
especial domain. “He drives me like a cart¬ 
horse.” 

“Ah, mon ami, yes, it is too bad,” murmured 
Fifine sympathetically. “And such a desolate 
place. Misericorde! it fills me with horror. 
No dancing, no music, no fashion, no nossing. 
Why it was you persuaded me to come with 
madame I cannot tell.” 

“Wait a while, only a little while, my angel, 
and you will see,” said Victor, his sullen eyes 
brightening. “I will have money, my Fifine, 


122 


A WAKING UP. 


money enough to marry you, ma belle, and give 
you a silk dress like madame’s, and a diamond 
ring, and all that you wish; and we will go 
back to la belle France, and open a little shop, 
and be gay and happy forever.” 

“Ah, talk, talk, all talk,” said Fifine, tossing 
her glossy head coquettishly, while she helped 
her companion generously to the home-cured 
ham and snowy bread. ''del! How can 
any one make money here?” 

“Ah, that is my business, ma ckhe,"' said 
Victor—“business that I must not tell.” 

“But if I am to be your wife, Victor, you 
should keep no secrets from me. But I see. 
Pouf, pouf, that is all your words mean: 
breath, only breath.” 

“My angel, no, no; all that I say I mean. 
But I dare tell you no more, because you are a 
woman, ma chere, and soft and tender and 
gentle, and for the work I have to do one must 
be bold and br-r-rave and str-r-rong,” concluded 
Victor, swelling his breast and rolling his r’s 
melodramatically. 

''Mon Dieu, you frighten me, Victor. Surely 
you would not turn bandit. And if you did,” 
Fifine laughed softly, " misericorde, there are 


A WAKING UP. 


123 


only the apple-trees to rob. Even madame 
would not bring her jewels here. She left them 
all safely locked up at home.” 

“All her jewels?” repeated Victor. “Ah, 
non, mon ami, there is one she has with her, 
the greatest, the most precious of all.” 

“ But I have not seen it,” said Fifine in per¬ 
plexity. “Is it her diamond pin ? her ruby 
ring ? her amethyst brooch ?” 

“No, it is neither diamond nor ruby nor 
amethyst, ma cherie,'' answered Victor as he 
rose from the table. “It is more precious to 
madame than all these, more precious than all 
the gold and silver and jewels in the world. 
Look,” and he pointed through the vine- 
veiled window at the merry group under the 
oak. “It is there !” 

“Little monsieur,” said Fifine gayly. “Ah, 
I see, I read the riddle. Little monsieur is 
the jewel that madame has brought with her, 
the most precious jewel she has; truly that is 
so. But, ah, no one will ever want to buy or 
borrow or steal little monsieur.” 

“Hush, hush!” Victor laid his hand 
roughly on Fifine’s arm. “Pardon, my angel, 
but there is danger in such words. Steal 


124 


A WAKING UP. 


little monsieur? Who would think of it, 
Fifine?’' 

“Who indeed?” echoed Fifine with another 
laugh. And Victor’s heavy lids fell to hide a 
look in his black eyes that Fifine was too merry 
and simple to see. 

Meanwhile there was happy chattering under 
the old oak that put the blackbirds to shame. 
Dick was telling of old Nance. 

“Is she a witch?” asked Lester, prepared 
for all sorts of primitive revelations in this new 
world. 

“Witch? No,” laughed Ted. “You don’t 
think we are fools enough to believe in witches, 
Lester Leonard? But lots of the colored peo¬ 
ple think she is, and believe she can hoodoo 
and cast spells. Father Felix tries to teach 
them better, but only our own people listen to 
him, and even some of them are stealing off to 
old Nance now. They say the ghosts at Pine- 
croft are waking up again, and something 
awful is going to happen.” 

“Where is Pinecroft?” asked Lester eagerly. 

“Oh, it’s a tumble-down old place about 
eight miles from here,” Dick answered. “A 
man was murdered there a long time ago, when 


A WAKING UP. 


125 


Aunt Leigh was a little girl, and no one has 
liked to live there, for folks say it has been 
haunted ever since. Isn’t that so, Uncle 
Pete?” asked Dick of the old man, who came 
by just then trundling a barrow of potatoes. 
“Isn’t Pinecroft haunted?” 

“I ain’t saying, Marse Dick, I ain’t saying,” 
answered Uncle Pete, shaking his grizzled head 
gravely. “Nebba was de sort to go circulat¬ 
ing niggah stories ’mong young white gentle¬ 
men. Miss Leigh she dun sot agin’ it plumb.” 

“Oh, you needn’t circulate any stories,” said 
Dick. “Just sit down and tell us what’s the 
matter at Pinecroft, Uncle Pete.” 

The old man sat down on his barrow and 
mopped his head, evidently brimful of forbidden 
knowledge. “What’s folks been telling you 
chillun ’bout Pinecroft?” he asked severely. 
“ I lay some of dese no-’count new niggahs has 
been filling yo’ heads wif lies. Nex’ t’ing you’ll 
be getting shy and skeery ez dem low-down 
white trash under de cliffs. You couldn’t buy 
one of dem boys to go a quarter of a mile from 
Pinecroft for a hundred dollars down. Say, 
you can hear de chains clanking and de voices 
a-groaning dat fur from de house. And dat 


126 


A WAKING UP, 


fool niggah Jim Digges come home ash-color 
de Oder night, ’lowed he seen a fiery face shining 
t’rough de trees big as de full moon.” 

“Maybe it was the full moon,” said Dick 
skeptically. 

“It couldn’t be, ’cause it grinned at him, 
sah,” replied Uncle Pete, “grinned and showed 
its teeth like it wanted to bite. I ain’t a-swear¬ 
ing to what Jim Digges says,” continued Uncle 
Pete conscientiously, “but de moanings I’se 
heem myself clar down to de ribber shore.” 

“ What kind of moaning was it. Uncle Pete? ” 
asked Dick, feeling now that he had the old man 
launched on the full tide of gruesome story. 

“Sperrit moaning,” replied Uncle Pete sol¬ 
emnly. “Dem dat has heard sperrit moaning 
nebba forgets it, chillun, cos it’s only de lost 
sperrits dat moan. An’ when you hear dat 
low kind of wail a-trembling troo de darkness, 
it makes your h’ar riz and your blood curdle, 
and de berry marrow ob your bones grow cold. 
An’ dat’s de kind ob moaning dat’s going on 
around Pinecroft now.” 

“What do you think it means, Uncle Pete?” 
asked Ted breathlessly. 

“I dtmno, chile, I dtmno. Some folks say 


A WAKING UP, 


127 


one thing and some t’other; but it ain’t no 
good sure. Been a-looking fur suthing cur’us 
to happen myself,” added Uncle Pete cheer¬ 
fully. “Ebbah since old Sweet busted out in 
full flow dis spring I knowed dar was some sort 
ob luck coming. De preachers down to de 
camp in Jude’s woods ’lows it’s de end ob de 
world dat’s nigh. Bress de Lord, if it does I’m 
ready,” said Uncle Pete, rising from his barrow. 
“I ain’t a-running to ole Nance for bar’s feet 
and snake-skins to keep old Satan’s claws offen 
me. I’s ready when de trumpet sounds. An’ 
you all better be too, chillun,” continued the 
old man. “Min’ you I ain’t saying anything 
is a-gwine ter happen, but thar’s a heap of 
cur’us signs around dese shores jest now.” 
And leaving his young hearers impressed 
despite themselves, the grizzled old oracle 
wheeled his barrow away. 


CHAPTER X. 

SUNSET SHADOWS. 

The Sim was setting at Playwater; the rosy 
beams trembling through the trees had all the 
tender sadness of a farewell. The cows had 
been milked, the horses stabled, the chickens 
fed, and, all their work done, Dick and Ted 
were perched upon the railing of the kitchen 
porch swinging their bare brown legs luxuri¬ 
ously and watching Aunt Beth, who at the 
open window was beating up a sally-lunn for 
the morrow’s breakfast. It was Aunt Chloe’s 
evening off, and the wide kitchen was in the 
spotless repose that always marked gentle 
Aunt Beth’s undivided reign. Skillets and 
pans winked back the fading sunbeams; the 
fire had died into a cheery bed of embers. 
Aunt Leigh sat by the doorway, her taper fin¬ 
gers busy with fine tatting, while Aunt Beth 

12S 


SUNSET SHADOWS. 


129 


whisked eggs and milk and flour together with 
the practised hand of an artist. No one but 
Aunt Beth could evolve such feathery loaves 
of golden breakfast bread as came from the 
Playwater ovens each morning. Even Fifine, 
versed in all the mysteries of her national art, 
declared Miss Wade’s “Sarah Loons” beyond 
French skill. 

“You are working yourself to death, sister,” 
said Aunt Leigh. “Why can’t you let Chloe 
make Maryland biscuit in the morning?” 

“Really, this is no trouble, Leigh dear,” 
answered Aunt Beth cheerily. “And the chil¬ 
dren all love it, especially poor little Lester; 
he took two slices yesterday morning. I 
really think he is improving; there was quite 
a touch of color in his cheeks to-day.” 

“And his mother thought he was feverish 
and put him to bed for it,” said Aunt Leigh 
grimly. 

“Victor told her so,” interposed Dick. “He 
was tired of wheeling Lester arotmd. Of all 
the lazy, good-for-nothing”— 

“Hush, hush, my dear,” said Aunt Beth. 
“ It isn’t your place nor mine to find fault with 
Mrs. Leonard’s servants. Though I must say 


SUNSET SHADOWS, 


130 

the man is not prepossessing, Leigh. There is 
a hang-dog look about him I don’t like.” 

“ Nor I,” said Aunt Leigh, nodding; “ though 
we must not judge by looks, of course. Mrs. 
Leonard assured me he was a most valuable 
man, and had brought her the highest recom¬ 
mendations. So, boys, I hope you will make 
no trouble with him.” 

But Aunt Leigh’s gentle warning was un¬ 
heard, for both boys just then gave a ringing 
shout and took handsprings from the porch 
rail as a ragged, red-headed figure came swing¬ 
ing up the garden path on a pair of crutches. 
“Dave! Dave!” was the hilarious greeting, 
“we haven’t seen you for a week. Where have 
you been ? Where did you come from ? ’ ’ 

“Hallo!” said Dave with a grin that bright¬ 
ened his freckled face wonderfully. “You’d 
better be glad to see me without asking no ques¬ 
tions, for I’ve brought ye prime news. And 
if ye don’t mind. Miss Wade, I’ll sit down here 
and rest for a minute before I talk.” And 
Dave, sliding down from his crutches, showed 
himself to be a thin, wiry boy of about fourteen, 
painfully crippled. “ I’ve come over from the 
Mission in less than forty minutes.” 


SUNSET SHADOWS. 


131 

“ Great heavens, boy! you must have flown,” 
said Aunt Leigh. “Sit down, of course, and 
I’ll get you some supper.” 

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Dave, dropping 
on the steps and slipping his crutches beside 
him. “I might manage a glass of milk and 
some bread, if you have it handy, but it must 
be eat and run, for I can’t wait for manners. 
Got to keep on to Judge Jessup’s. Father 
Felix sent a message to little Pat. The altar- 
boys, fifty of them, are coming down on an 
excursion to-morrow, and Father Felix wants 
Ted and Dick to bring her over and see the 
fun.” 

“Gee whiz! that is great,” exclaimed Ted 
and Dick breathlessly. 

“Great! You bet it is,” corroborated Dave 
emphatically. “ They are going to bring down 
music and ice-cream and all sorts of good things, 
and go swimming and rowing. Brother Barry 
has borrowed every boat he can And, and he is 
putting up swings and seesaws, and old Seth 
is going to set up a target and lend him rifles 
for a shooting match. There will be the great¬ 
est time you ever heard of at St. Bride’s. 
Thank you, ma’am.” Dave paused to take 


132 


SUNSET SHADOWS. 


the generous mug of milk and plate of snowy 
bread Aunt Leigh brought out to him, and 
proceeded to bolt it in haste. “Got to 
hurry on to Jessup’s,” he explained between 
bites. “Father Felix has written a note to 
the Judge asking if little Pat can’t come with 
you.” 

“Tell her we will stop for her bright and 
early,” said Dick, “and oh. Aunt Beth, if we 
could only take Lester! ” 

“My dear boy, no; his mother would not 
hear of it,” said Aunt Beth decidedly. “ She 
thought he had been excited and made nervous 
to-day. Don’t speak of it to him; it would 
only make him unhappy.” 

“Sorry for him, then,” said Dave as, cram¬ 
ming down the last of his bread and milk, he 
swung up on his crutches again for a start. ‘ ‘ But 
be sure you are bright and early, boys. The boat 
will be out at ten o’clock in the morning and 
won’t leave until seven at night. We are go¬ 
ing to have a day of it, sure.” And he loped 
off again through the fading sunset, as brisk 
and blithe a messenger as if he were indeed on 
wings. 

“Oh, mamma, look, look!” cried Lester, as 


SUNSET SHADOWS, 


133 


from his cushioned couch by the window, 
where he had been resting all the evening, he 
caught sight of the queer little figure swinging 
off through the sunset. “It’s lame Dave, 
mamma, and just see how he goes!” 

Mrs. Leonard looked, and a strange, sick 
repulsion filled her heart. It seemed a gro¬ 
tesque caricature of her own idol that mocked 
her anxious eyes. 

“Oh, I wish, I wish I could go like that,” 
sighed the young millionaire beside her. 

“Like—like that!” gasped his mother. 

“ Dick says his back and legs are as bad as 
mine, but he can go anywhere and he can shoot 
and fish and row and swim just like the other 
boys. Oh, I wish I could go like that too. 
Won’t you let me borrow his crutches and 
try?” 

“Borrow crutches—from that—that raga¬ 
muffin!” cried his mother passionately. 

“ It would kill you, monsieur,” said Victor. 

“It wouldn’t, it wouldnt,” answered Les¬ 
ter. “Oh, mamma, if you would only let me 
try! If I could only shoot or ride or fish or 
swim; if I could only do something like other 
boys, and not be kept a baby, a real girl baby, 


134 


SUNSET SHADOWS. 


forever!” And Lester burst into a wild passion 
of tears that rent his mother’s heart. 

“You shall, darling, you shall,” she said 
tremulously. “ Lester, you shall go fishing to¬ 
morrow. Victor will manage it somehow — 
your own good Victor. Isn’t there some nice, 
smooth road you can take him, Victor ?” 

“Oui, certainement, madame, there is,” said 
Victor eagerly—“a nice, smooth road, and a 
place, madame, all quiet and pleasant and 
comfortable—most comfortable.” 

“Then stop fretting, dear, and you shall go 
there to-morrow. Bring out his English rod 
and line and let him look at them, Victor; get 
everything ready. Only don’t cry like that, 
Lester, for it breaks my heart.” 

“And will the boys go with me, mamma?” 
sobbed Lester, still uncomforted. 

“The boys! the boys!” exclaimed the half- 
distracted mother. “I don’t know; I suppose 
they must. Go ask them, Victor; ask them if 
they will go out fishing with Lester to-morrow.” 

Victor went with lowering brow; the boys’ 
company was evidently not to his taste. But 
there was another look on his face when in a 
few moments he came back. “ It is impossible. 


SUNSET SHADOWS. 


135 


monsieur; they have to go to the Mission to¬ 
morrow; the priest has sent for them. But I 
will take monsieur and give him all ze pleasure, 
all ze happiness I can alone.’' And with this 
promise poor Lester had to be content. 




CHAPTER XL 


Dave’s adventure. 

Twilight was falling softly about St. Bride’s. 
Wrapped in his long cloak, Father Felix stood 
on the porch watching the evening star trem¬ 
bling in the tender glow of the fading day and 
listening to the birds twittering their vesper 
song. Already the shadows were heavy under 
the oaks whence came the cheery voice of 
Brother Barry blending with old Seth’s ruder 
tone. They had been fixing the target for the 
morning shooting match on a smooth stretch 
behind the house. 

“It’s up,” said Brother Barry as he reached 
the porch, “and the swings too, father. It’s 
fine shport the b’ys will have to-morrow. 
Everything is ready but the rifles, and Seth here 
says he will see to them.” 

“And keep on the spot, I hope, to watch the 

136 


DAVES ADVENTURE, 


137 


young marksmen,” said Father Felix. “I 
don’t want any one hurt.” 

“Arrah, what harrum could come to them, 
father?” said Brother Barry. “Sure it’s b’ys 
that’s coming down to us, not girruls. The 
crack of a g\m will put life into this quiet 
ould place.” 

“Have it as you will, then,” said Father Fe¬ 
lix. “You are master of ceremonies. Brother, 
all I ask is that our good friend here will be on 
hand to watch the shooting match and act as 
umpire. You and I are men of peace and can¬ 
not pretend to settle a game of war.” 

“I’ll be here, never fear, sur,” answered 
Seth. “And I’ll bring the rifles with me, and 
powder and shot as well. Dave was going back 
with me to-night,” added the old man, looking 
around for his young chum as Brother Barry 
passed on into the house to light up. 

“ He has gone on an errand for me. Won’t 
you sit down and wait for him?” said Father 
Felix cordially. 

“Ef you don’t mind, I will,” said the old 
man, seating himself upon the porch step. 
“It’s a longish stretch up to my little place, 
and the boy might not want to take it alone, 


138 


DAVES ADVENTURE, 


’specially since there’s been so many fool tales 
going rotind about h’ants ’long the shore. 
Pretty nice place you have here,” continued 
Seth as he fortified himself with a big quid of 
tobacco. “I come up sometimes on Sundays 
with Dave to church.” 

“Yes, I have seen you,” said Father Felix, 
smiling. 

“Hev you?” said Seth in surprise. “I kept 
fur back ez I could, for, ez I told Dave, I hadn’t 
no business a-pushing in with reg’lar purfessing 
members. But he said that didn’t make no 
difference here.” 

“And Dave was right,” replied the old 
priest. “Come whenever and wherever you 
wish; you will always be welcome.” 

“ That’s friendly, but I ain’t looking to jine, 
ye see,” said Seth cautiously. “ I ain’t the sort 
fur that.” 

“Why not?” asked Father Felix pleasantly. 

“Too tough a lot,” replied the old man 
tersely. “I ain’t expecting harps and angel’s 
wings when I die. No, sir, I wouldn’t know 
what to do with them if I got them. I’ve been 
a hard, rough customer in my time, and I ain’t 
got no right setting in for grace and glory now. 


DAVES ADVENTURE. 


139 


I used to go to the meeting-house down to 
Ryder’s Mills once in a while, till I struck a 
revival, and the passon he come down ’longside 
me, and put his hand on my shoulder and 
allowed he was going to wrastle for me with 
the Lord in prayer. Made me feel sort of 
cur’us, and I’ve never been there since. You 
don’t do anything like that here?” 

“No,” said Father Felix, “not exactly in 
that way. Though when I stand at the altar 
I am praying for you and all present.” 

“You air!” exclaimed Seth. “For niggers 
and all?” 

“All,” repeated the priest, smiling. “In 
God’s house all are His children alike.” 

“I’m afeerd I never could hold to that,” 
said old Seth doubtfully. “ Black is black and 
white is white, and you can’t make ’em the 
same any more than you kin make a rabbit and 
a ’coon. But I like it here fust rate. I like 
your music and lights and flowers; sort of 
cheerful after hearing the mourners at the 
meeting-house. And I like your preaching too. 
Whether it’s gospel truth or not I can’t say, 
but it’s dumed good hard sense.” 

Father Felix laughed softly; perhaps his 


140 


DAVE’S ADVENTURE. 


mind went back to other days when he had 
looked down on the congregations of great 
cathedrals, held spell-bound by his words. Ah, 
he felt he must win this simple, honest soul to 
God by plain “hard sense.’' 

“Some one hez got to talk plain and square 
to the folks ’round here,” continued Seth. 
“ Blamed ef niggers and white haven’t gone 
plumb crazy ’bout h’ants and devils. Ole 
Nance is a-selling ’em all bar’s feet and snake- 
skins and every sort of hoodoo truck. Lige 
Wilson, that bragged he’d give any ghost a 
black eye that come near him, bust into my 
cabin last night shaking ez if he had seven 
days’ ague—hed to pour nigh half a pint of raw 
whiskey down his throat before he could find 
breath to tell he had been chased by a devil 
without a head through Pinecroft Woods. 
Jehoshaphat! ” The speaker started to his 
feet, and even Father Felix sprang up in alarm, 
for at that moment, as if in corroboration of 
Seth’s tale, a figure came with wild, unnatural 
leaps through the shadows and dropped with 
a shivering cry at the Mission door. 

“Who are ye, what are ye?” cried Seth, 
springing forward with the fierce, angry terror 


DAVE'S ADVENTURE, 


141 

of a bold, fearless man. “Darned ef—t’ain’t 
—Dave!” he gasped in another tone. “Lad! 
lad! what has happened to ye?” 

“Father, Father Felix,” panted the boy, 
dragging himself to his knees, “bless me, make 
the sign of the cross on me. Oh, I thought I 
was safe. I had my scapular, my rosary, but 
I saw it, father, I saw it at my very side.” 

“Saw what, my poor child?” asked Father 
Felix soothingly, as he bent over the trem¬ 
bling boy. 

“The devil! ” sobbed Dave wildly. 

“You young fool, have ye gone mad with 
the rest? ” blurted out old Seth savagely. 

“No, no, no,” answered Dave. “Give me 
a drink of water and Fll tell you, Seth.” 

“ Bring a glass of wine. Brother Barry,” said 
Father Felix as the good brother came in alarm 
to the door, “and help Dave to the porch, my 
friend; the boy has had a shock that has un¬ 
nerved him completely. Drink this, my son,” 
continued the old priest kindly as Brother Barry 
brought out the wine, “and then tell us what 
frightened you.” 

Dave obeyed, and then, steadied by the 
guarding presence beside him spoke in a quieter 


142 


DAVES ADVENTURE. 


tone. “ I went to Play water first, father, and 
then—then to Jessup’s Manor, as you told me. 
And Mrs. Jessup was very kind, and said little 
Pat could come with the boys to-morrow, and 
made me stay to tea. And then it was so late, 
and I knew Seth would be waiting for me here, 
I thought I would take the short cut across the 
cliff. It goes by—^by”—Dave paused with a 
shudder—“by Pinecroft. But I was in a great 
hurry, and I wouldn’t let myself be afraid. 
For you had told me it was all nonsense; that 
God would not give anything evil from the 
other world power to hurt His children, and 
Seth said only fools and niggers believed in 
ghosts; and I had my beads and scapular with 
me, so I just swung along the road fast as my 
crutches could take me, singing and whistling 
by turns to make it lively, till I got nearly by 
the house. And then—then It jumped out of 
the bushes at me.” Dave paused, shaking 
from head to foot. 

“What jumped out at you, my boy?’* 

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know,” was the 
piteous answer. “It was tall, taller than the 
highest man, with big eyes like burning coals, 
and it threw fire at me and cursed, cursed 


DAVE'S ADVENTURE. 


143 


dreadful,” panted Dave. “Oh, I don’t know 
how I got away; it seemed as if my crutches 
ran for me, I was so scared and cold and sick. 
I don’t know—how I got safe—^back—here”— 

“The boy has fainted,” said Father Felix as 
Dave reeled back against the porch pillar. 
“We must put him to bed here for the night; 
and you, my good man,” turning to Seth, “you 
will stay with us too. There is room for you 
both. This Pinecroft business must be looked 
into,” added the priest when, Dave having 
revived imder Brother Barry’s care, old Seth 
stepped out again on the porch. 

“Ay,” answered the old man grimly. “And 
if ye know where I kin git a man that ain’t 
afeerd to take a Winchester and go along with 
me. I’ll look into it this very night.” 

“No, no, my brave friend, no. Ventme 
nothing to-night. But I have thought of a 
way to banish all terrors real and imaginary 
from the place forever. And with God’s help 
we will try it to-morrow.” 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE PLOTTERS. 

It was close on to midnight. Birds and 
boys and even flowers were asleep at Playwater, 
but old Sweet was still singing merrily to the 
stars. Bubbling, plashing, rippling over the 
rocks, the waters echoed all the music they had 
caught during the day in their midnight song. 

The patter of little feet, the chatter of gay 
young voices, the tinkle of merry laughter, 
seemed to blend in the bubble and murmur 
that filled the silence, and made a stealthy 
figure creeping through the shadows mutter a 
foreign curse. 

“A pest upon the waters! It is as if they 
were talking, talking night and day.” And 
even as he spoke a pebble, loosened by his 
footstep, rolling into the tumbling stream 
below, roused old Sweet into a new burst of 
midnight glee. “Ha, ha, ha!” came the cho- 
144 


THE PLOTTERS. 


I4S 

rused laugh of the waters through the dark 
stillness in mocking music that made the in¬ 
truder recoil trembling into the deeper shadow 
in guilty fear. 

“Bah! I am a fool—a fool,” he whispered 
to himself after a moment’s pause, and then 
putting his hand to his lips he gave a queer 
low signal, like the cry of some night-bird. 
Two, three times he repeated this, and then 
there was an answering call in the hollow 
below. ''Bienl at last, at last,” he said, 
scrambling down through the underbrush, to 
the great rock, where old Sweet with a last 
merry leap vanished into the earth. “Two, 
three nights have I come here, waiting for 
your call,” he continued as another figure 
stepped out of the shadows to meet him. “I 
am not to be so fooled, monsieur, like ze dog 
to whom you whistle. I will have no Yankee 
tricks. What you say to me you must do, 
you must do, or I—I—what you call it?—I 
back out.” 

“You’ve been waiting for me, you say. 
Then you have heard nothing; there was no 
harm done; those little kids didn’t blab,” said 
the other eagerly. 


146 


THE PLOTTERS. 


“Blab? kids? I do not know what you 
mean, monsieur.” 

“Good, good! Our game is safe yet, then, 
Delarne,” was the relieved reply. “We’re in 
luck, prime luck. I’ve been afraid to come 
near the place for the last three days, for on my 
last visit I found two youngsters and a kitten 
poring over our private correspondence. They 
had found the note you left.” 

“Found my note, you say? Ze children 
found my note? Misericorde! then I am 
ruined. I am done wiz ze business, done for¬ 
ever this very night. I fly, I leave the place.” 

“Nonsense!” said his companion, “don’t 
be a chicken-hearted fool. The note meant 
nothing to the youngsters. I took it from them 
and explained it with a yam of my own, and 
since you have heard nothing it is plain they 
have forgotten the whole business.” 

“I am not so sure of that,” was Victor’s 
reply, for the midnight plotter was no other 
than Lester’s model valet. “Were they the 
boys from the house above? ” 

“No, one was a girl, a mite of a thing in a 
pink sunbonnet.” 

“Ah! ” Victor, who had never seen Pat, 


iTHE PLOTTERS: 


147 


drew a long breath of relief. “Then we may¬ 
be safe still—though I do not know, I do not 
know. If my note was found, monsieur—” 

“ Pooh! I tell you there is no danger. I have 
waited two days to see.*’ 

“Monsieur has been very careful—of him¬ 
self,” said Victor dryly. VBut what of me? ” 
“It was a case of look out for yourself, my 
friend, or Sauve qui peuty as I believe you 
Frenchmen have it. I could do you no good 
by coming here, and might have done myself 
a great deal of harm. But the trouble has 
blown over and I am ready to talk business.” 

“ But I am not. I give up, monsieur, I give 
up. Sauve qui peut it is, you say. Ah, yes, 
and poor Victor left behind. NoUy noUy non. 
I will do nothing, nothing.” 

“And give up your two thousand dollars, 
you fool,” said the other impatiently. “ Brace 
up and be a man, Delame. Two thousand 
dollars—ten thousand francs, just for putting 
a sick boy into our hands for a day or two.” 

“ But if he should die,” said Victor, trem¬ 
bling under the mingled strain of greed and fear 
—“if the terror, the shock, the fright should 
kill him?” 


148 


THE PLOTTERS. 


“ Bah! kids are not so easily killed. I swear 
to you we don’t mean to hurt the boy. We 
won’t even take him away if we can help it. 
We have found a safe place to hide him while 
we squeeze the old lady for our price. If she 
is the woman we hear she is, she will pay up 
anything we ask in twenty-four hours. And 
two thousand of it shall be yours. Think 
of it, man! It would take you a lifetime to 
earn the half of it as you are now. No more 
bowing and scraping and boot-licking; you 
will be a free man forever. Ten thousand 
francs!” 

“And Fifine, ma belle Fifine! monsieur; you 
have conquered. I will do it, I will.” 

“Good! I thought you would come to your 
senses again. It is the simplest piece of busi¬ 
ness in the world for you. We only ask you to 
bring the boy alone to some place in this wilder¬ 
ness where we can carry him off without a row. 
He is going to squeal, of course, so we don’t 
want any one to hear him. Two thousand 
dollars cash down to you the moment we have 
our hands on the chap, and then it can be 
Sauve qui pent with you whenever and wherever 
you please. You can skip off before there is 


THE PLOTTERS. 


149 


any alarm, for naturally, as soon as there is, 
there will be a look out for you.” 

”0w, oui, there will,” said Victor, trem¬ 
bling again like one with an ague. ” I will be 
blamed, I will be searched for. Monsieur, I 
cannot, I dare not.” 

“Dare not? Pooh! when did you get so 
squeamish. Delame? How about that dia¬ 
mond business in Boston last year? Suppose 
I should feel it my duty to tell all I know about 
that?” 

“Monsieur, monsieur, no, no. I will do all 
—all that you ask,” faltered Victor humbly. 

“Then talk quick,” was the rough reply. 
“When and where shall it be? for we are tired 
playing ghost and devil round that old roost 
by the river to scare meddling fools off our 
tracks. When and where will you give the 
boy up to us? You ought to be able to manage 
it easily now; you have been playing angel 
guardian to him for two months. It is lucky 
madame had not time to examine your high 
recommendations very closely. Come, now, 
talk. When and where are we to get the 
boy?” 

“To-morrow, monsieur,” said the trembling 


THE PLOTTERS. 


150 

wretch—“to-morrow we are to go fishing; it 
has been my first chance to get him out alone. 
Always there has been some one to watch, to 
see, to hear, and the boys—a pest upon the 
boys!—they were everywhere with us. But 
to-morrow they cannot come.” 

“You are quite sure of that?“ asked his 
companion anxiously. 

“Ah, yes, monsieur, quite sure. I have 
asked. There is to be an excursion at the 
Mission, five miles from here, and they will go 
there for the day. Everybody will go.” 

“Good! that plays into our hands first rate. 
And you and your little monsieur will go fish¬ 
ing. Good again! We will go fishing, too. 
Where shall we meet?” 

“At twelve o’clock to-morrow, monsieur, 
we will be at the Indian Rock, at the bend of 
the river, about two miles from here.” 

“Aye, I know the place, and the road that 
leads to it. Good! it couldn’t be better. All 
right; we will be there, my friend, fishing too.” 
***** 

The boys were up betimes next morning. 
The dew was still thick on the grass when Te:d 
and Dick, in fresh linen suits that made amends 


THE PLOTTERS. 


for bare legs and coarse hats, were tramping off 
to Jessup’s Manor to get Pat and begin their 
day of delight. It had been years since there 
had been an excursion to St. Bride’s. Even 
Simday-schools and sodalities found the gayer 
resorts with their “flying horses” and roller 
coasters more enticing than the quiet green old 
Mission by the river. But Dick had a dim, 
delightful remembrance of an altar-boys’ excur¬ 
sion long ago, of the waving banners and joyous 
music, the limitless feasting and merriment, 
that filled the gardens and groves of St. Bride’s 
with bewildering life and light, and he resolved 
not to lose a moment of this red-letter day. 

The young Wades had been gone two hours 
when Lester awoke, three before he had his 
breakfast, four when he was wheeled out by 
Victor on the garden path, a pathetic little 
figure in the English tweeds and strong boots 
he had insisted upon donning for his morning 
sport. 

“Give me the rods and fishing-tackle; I can 
carry them myself, Victor, and the bait—did 
Uncle Pete get the worms for bait?” 

“Everything is ready, monsieur,” said Vic¬ 
tor respectfully. 



152 


THE PLOTTERS. 


Mrs. Leonard followed the rolling chair to 
the gate, reckless of the dainty French neg¬ 
ligee she was trailing through dust and dew. 
“Be very, very careful, Victor, for these roads 
are rough. Oh, I wish he could have gone in 
his carriage.” 

“It would be impossible, madame; the river 
path is too small.” 

“And we must gratify him,” sighed the poor 
lady anxiously. “ But you will be sure and 
keep the smooth road of which you spoke?” 

‘ ‘ Quite sure, madame. ’ ’ 

“And go very slowly, Victor, so there will 
be no danger. And bring him back by two 
o’clock, so he can have his lunch and nap. 
Oh, I won’t have an easy moment while he 
is gone.” 

“Oh, mamma, mamma!” said Lester pee¬ 
vishly as she kissed him good-by. “ I am not 
a baby, mamma. Let me be a boy just for 
once.” And Lester sat straight up in his 
cushions, and prepared to enjoy his unusual 
freedom; for it was a bracing day despite the 
warmth of the season. The fresh breeze that 
swept up the broad road bore a salt whiff of the 
wide ocean bay from which it came; the deep 


THE PLOTTERS. 


153 


blue sky was flecked by fleecy cloud-drifts that 
tempered without shadowing the summer sun¬ 
shine ; the air was fragrant with the wild roses 
and honeysuckle tangled amid the rocks; old 
Sweet foamed down the hillside in the mad¬ 
dest, merriest glee. There was not a warning 
note to tell of evil or treachery or peril 
near. 

But Lester found it dull. Victor was poor 
company after bluff Dick and jolly Ted, and 
to-day he seemed especially silent and ab¬ 
stracted, watching from side to side nervously, 
and meeting all Lester’s attempts at conver¬ 
sation with evident effort. A fishing expedi¬ 
tion with this faithful Victor began to look 
rather a dismal failure, until, after a k 
through the woods, Lester found hi r- 
ing gently down a smooth, grassy sk;,/^ 
shore, where the great cliff called Indian Rock, 
rising from the inward curve of the river, had 
gathered round its base a sheltered stretch 
of hard sandy beach. Two fishermen were 
here already, busy with rod and line; and as 
Victor wheeled him out by the sunlit water 
Lester’s spirits rose. 

“Good morning,” said one of the strangers. 


THE PLOTTERS. 


IS 4 

“Glad to find you out for a morning’s sport. 
Ah, you don’t remember me, I see. Master 
Lester, but I know you. I was at the Alta- 
mont with you last summer. I am Colonel 
Leigh Burridge.” 

“ I beg pardon, but I—I didn’t remember 
you,” said Lester apologetically. “ f have trav¬ 
elled so much, you see.” 

“No offence, no offence at all,” said Colonel 
Burridge heartily. “Very natural that you 
can’t remember every one you meet, my boy. 
With you it is different; you are an object of 
interest everywhere. I heard you were in this 
neighborhood summering. Find it a little 
lonely, I guess, don’t you?” 

“Sometimes,” answered Lester, thinking of 
the long hours with Victor under the oaks. 

“Confounded lonely!” continued the Colonel 
emphatically. “My friend Danvers and I 
came down for a few days’ hunting and fishing, 
but we’ve had enough of it already.” 

“Oh, I didn’t know people could himt in 
June,” said Lester in surprise. 

Mr. Danvers laughed. It was not a pleasant 
laugh, despite the sharp white teeth it showed 
so plainly. “That depends on the game you 


THE PLOTTERS. 


IS 5 

are after,” he said. “We can’t complain of 
our luck, eh, Burridge?” 

And then Colonel Burridge laughed too. 
Only Victor stood apart gloomily, his hand 
shaking nervously as he baited his yoimg 
master’s hook. 

“Try a bit of fish for bait, my man,” 
said the Colonel. “You’ll find it hides the 
hook. That’s the great secret in fishing, hiding 
the hook. So there; now throw out your line 
here,” and the speaker pushed Lester’s chair 
a little nearer the water. “Ten to one, he 
has a bite within three'minutes.” 

“Done!” said Danvers, taking out his 
watch. There was a breathless wait, and then 
came a twitch at Lester’s line. 

“Easy, easy,” continued Colonel Burridge. 
“Don’t get nervous, my boy; pull steady. 
George! it’s a bouncer. Just two-thirty, Dan¬ 
vers; I’ve won.” 

Flushed with triumph, Lester landed his 
prize. Ah, this was sport indeed! Never had 
he met pleasanter company than these two 
gentlemen who kept near him, jesting, laugh¬ 
ing, baiting his hooks, betting merrily on his 
. luck, for an hour or more. 


THE PLOTTERS. 


156 

“It is time to go home,” said Danvers at 
last. “We have fooled here long enough, 
Burridge. And you’d better not keep your 
young master here much longer, my man. 
The tide is coming in, and this beach will be 
under^ water in half an hour.” 

“Yes, yes, we must go too, monsieur, we 
must go,” said Victor hurriedly. 

“We may as well go together then,” said 
Colonel Burridge pleasantly. “Let me push 
the chair a bit. I think we’ll find this path to 
the left an easier climb. You ought to have 
a little goat-cart for these hills. I know a 
place in town where you can buy a nice strong 
billy-goat trained for harness, gentle and sure¬ 
footed as a donkey. With a neat little fix 
behind him you could drive yourself anywhere. 
Cost about a couple of hundred, but you 
wouldn’t mind that.” 

“No,” said Lester eagerly. “Where can I 
get it? I will ask mamma about it to-night.” 

“Or perhaps a dog would suit you better. 
I have a fine one here with me: St. Bernard, 
pure breed, golden brown with white breast; 
tall and strong as a young colt and gentle as 
a lamb. Took three prizes at the dog show,” 


THE PLOTTERS. 


157 

continued the Colonel, giving the chair another 
turn. 

The path was growing wilder each moment. 
They had left the sunlit slopes where the wild 
roses and honeysuckle grew, and were among 
the pines now. The heavy branches arching 
overhead made a sad twilight of the summer 
noon, and the way was far from smooth, for 
twice Victor had to help Colonel Burridge to 
lift the chair over a ledge of rock. But Lester’s 
companion chatted on so pleasantly that all 
this was unnoticed. 

“Yes, Monk—I call him Monk after his old 
master—is a fine fellow, but he has outgrown 
my bachelor establishment and I would sell him 
cheap to a good owner that could appreciate 
him.” 

“I’d like to see him,” said Lester with inter¬ 
est. “ Mamma would buy him for me if I want 
him, I am sure. Could you bring him up to 
Play water Farm ? ’ ’ 

“Why, we’re off to town this evening, and I 
am afraid I won’t have time. But here is our 
place,” continued the Colonel as a gloomy old 
house shrouded in heavy shrubbery became 
visible through the close-crowding pines. “If 


THE PLOTTERS, 


iS8 

you can stop a minute, I’ll show him to you. 
You can have him for fifty dollars. He’s 
worth a hundred if he is worth a cent, but I 
can’t afford to keep him any longer. And if 
you’d like it, I’ll leave him with you on trial; 
if he isn’t what you want, I’ll be up here again 
in a week and take him back.” 

^‘I’ll stop,” said Lester, quite delighted with 
so friendly an offer. “Victor, I want to stop 
here and look at this gentleman’s dog.” 

“As monsieur pleases,” stammered Victor, 
and the chair was turned in an old broken 
gateway, and up the weed-grown path that 
stretched between high box hedges to the 
house. Danvers stepped forward and un¬ 
locked the heavy front door. 

“ He is inside,” said the Colonel, and he gave 
a quick push to the chair that sent it briskly 
forward, while the hall door slammed behind 
with a clang. 

“Done!” shouted Danvers and Burridge 
uproariously. 

“My money, my money, messieurs! Pay 
me now quick, that I may fly,” cried Victor 
tremulously. 

Lester gave a wild, startled glance aroimd 


THE PLOTTERS. 


159 


him at the mouldy walls, the cob webbed win¬ 
dows, the dust, the darkness, the desolation. 

“Victor, take me out!” he cried sharply. 
“I don’t like this place. Take me out, I say, 
quick, quick!” 

“No use, my lad,” said Burridge. “Your 
man has sold out to us. You are the game 
we’ve been hunting up here, and we’ve trapped 
you tight and fast. Oh, you can squeal all you 
please,” as Lester’s wild shrieks of terror rang 
out through the hall. “You will only be an¬ 
other shrieking devil added to the Pinecroft 
troop.” 

“Messieurs, messieurs, he is going into 
spasms!” cried Victor as the boy, half mad¬ 
dened by terror, flimg himself from his chair, 
in a desperate effort to escape, and fell strug¬ 
gling and screaming to the floor. 

“Bah!” said Danvers roughly. “Let him 
squirm; it won’t hurt him. Lift him up, Bur¬ 
ridge; we will have to shut him up in a safer 
place than this. Bring him to the room we 
have ready for him.” And shrieking, strug¬ 
gling, battling with all his ptmy strength 
against his heartless captors, poor Lester was 
borne away. 


CHAPTER XIIL 

THE “ EXCURSION.” 

Gay with fluttering flags and pennants, 
pulsing with stirring music, fifty boys cheering 
lustily from her decks, the big excursion boat 
“The Southern Belle” swept aroimd the river 
curve to the old wharf at St. Bride’s. In vain 
the officers in charge tried to guide their light 
infantry into rank and file; before the gang¬ 
plank was out there was a score of boys leaping 
to the shore. 

Whoops and huzzas of delight woke the 
echoes of the cliffs as, in all the uproarious glee 
of their annual holiday, the altar-boys stormed 
the green heights of the old Mission. All kinds 
and ages and conditions were here, from the 
tall yoimg cross-bearer, who led all solemn 
ceremonials with austere dignity, to the wee 
golden-haired “altar angels,” who only knew 
how to walk with chubby hands clasped in the 
i6o 


THE EXCURSIONS i6i 

“procession of the Lamb”; from handsome 
Captain Jack Waters and his dozen “Kostka” 
Cadets (Jack by his pastor’s request officered 
the excursion) to sturdy Tim Lanahan, whose 
father drove Mrs. Senator Waters’ coach. But, 
as Tim proudly assured his doting mother 
“whin the two of us are in our cassocks and 
surplices av a Sunday, ye’d niver know the 
differ but for the shine av Mr. Jack’s boots.” 

So it was a very mixed but merry company 
that charged up to the gate of St. Bride’s, 
scrambling, leaping, somersaulting in a very 
madness of glee, for to many of the young 
excursionists this yearly outing was the sole 
opening of gates closed at all other times on 
the Eden of Nature—sunlit river, waving forest, 
grassy hillside, sloping shore. 

“Back, ye young omadhauns, back!” cried 
Brother Barry in excited warning as half a 
dozen or more started on a wild race to the 
cliffs that went down a sheer thirty feet to the 
river. “Ye’ll break yer necks on the rocks 
below.” 

“ He manes we are to kape off the grass,” in¬ 
terpreted pale little Dennis Monaghan. “ Aisy, 
b’ys, don’t ye hear his riverince calling yez? 


i 62 


THE “ EXCURSIONr 


Kape off the grass as the cops bid ye at 
home.” 

“No, no,” said Brother Barry pityingly. 
“ Run where ye plaze, so ye don’t kill yourselves 
intirely. Whisht, all of yeznow; Father Fe¬ 
lix wants to shpake to yez. Whisht, I say.” 
But Brother Barry might as well have tried to 
hush the wild music of the mountain stream 
as it bursts from the winter’s ice. 

Father Felix stood under the old oak, his 
“marshals,” as he called Ted and Dick and 
Dave, around him, and little Pat, her eyes 
round with wonderment, holding his hand, 
while the gentle sanctuary ladies in charge of 
the “little ones” vainly clapped their hands 
for silence. 

It took military methods to subdue the glad 
tumult. The Captain of the Kostka Cadets 
leaped to a moss-grown stump. “Order!” he 
shouted in his most stentorian tone. “Right 
face! Shoulder arms! At-ten-tion!” Startled 
silence fell on the noisy crowd. “ Father Felix 
wants to speak to us. ” 

“Hush, ye spalpeens!” echoed Dennis Mona¬ 
ghan in less impressive vernacular, “his river- 
ince is going to prache.” 


THE EXCURSIONr 


163 


“Not at all, my dear children,” said the old 
priest, smiling. “I would not preach to you 
this morning for—for a barrel of sugar-plums. 
I wish only to say three things, that will take 
about three minutes. First, to welcome you to 
old St. Bride’s and wish you a glad, happy day 
in its green groves and gardens. Scatter and 
enjoy yourselves where and how you please; 
river, shore, lawn, woods, all are yours to-day. 
I only ask that when you hear the Mission bell 
give three strokes you will meet me here again 
imder this old oak, when I will have something 
to propose that will interest you, I am sure. 
And thirdly, I will be glad if you will begin this 
beautiful day by singing a hymn of praise to 
the good God who has made this spot His 
dwelling-place for nearly three hundred years.” 

There was a moment’s pause, and then a 
sweet-voiced sanctuary lady began the grand 
old hymn that has voiced the praise and joy of 
the Church for centuries—‘ ‘ Te Deumlaudamus ’ ’: 

“Holy God, we praise Thy name; 

Lord of all, we bow before Thee; 

All on earth Thy sceptre claim. 

All in heaven above adore Thee. 

Infinite Thy vast domain, 

Everlasting is Thy reign.” 


104 


THE EXCURSIONr 


Voice after voice took up the hymn, until 
woods and cliffs seemed to thrill with the full, 
sweet young chorus, and the saucy blackbirds, 
twittering in the big oaks, hushed their own 
song to hear. 

“Good, very good!” said Father Felix as the 
hymn ended. “We will sing again before we 
part to-day, my children. Now scatter and 
enjoy yourselves. Brother Barry, who is mas¬ 
ter of ceremonies, and these young people here, 
who have come to welcome you, will show you 
where to find amusement even in quiet old 
St. Bride’s.” And the young “marshals” were 
soon the centres of hilarious groups as the 
Mission guests scattered to various points of 
especial interest. 

Ted headed the fun in the grove, where 
youngsters of his own age found the swings 
and the seesaws most to their taste. 

Dick led the way to the target, where Cap¬ 
tain Jack and his Kostka Cadets tried their 
marksmanship, while old Seth looked on with 
a grim smile. “Pretty fair, young mister, 
pretty fair for target shooting. But if that 
’ar bull’s-eye was a hungry catamount’s with 
its teeth sharpened fur you, you’d have to hit 


THE EXCURSIONr 165 

a leetle more pertikler, as you would only 
aggerawate his temper. Try it again, now. 
Steady your rifle, so.” 

“Eureka!” cried Captain Jack triumphantly, 
“went right to the spot that time.” 

Old Seth blinked at the target critically. 
“Waal, not quite,” he said. “The h’ar-line 
counts consid’able when you mean business, 
young mister Ef you don’t mind watching 
an old chap that has been handling a rifle for 
more’n fifty years. I’ll show you a trick or two 
you might find useful in tighter places than 
this.” And the old man proceeded to show 
them “tricks” of such skill that the young sol¬ 
diers made the hills ring with their shouts of 
applause. 

Dave, though a little pale from his night 
adventure, quite forgot its terrors in the sport 
that reigned on the river and shore, where the 
boys waded and swam, rowed and paddled 
tmder his teaching and guidance, for on the 
water Dave was master of the situation. The 
river had been Dave’s friend from babyhood. 
The kindly waves had upborne his crippled 
limbs when they were powerless on land. He 
had learned to float and swim before he could 


i66 


THE EXCURSIONr 


crawl. And what Dave could not do with a 
boat really was not worth the doing. Brother 
Barry knew his guests were safe with Dave in 
command of the sport on the river-shore. 

And Pat, little Pat, spotless to-day in simny 
muslin and flower-wreathed hat, her eyes danc¬ 
ing and curls flying, was a very fairy of fun to 
the chubby little altar angels, leading games 
of tag and hide-and-seek under the oaks, and 
over the lawn, and even through the wide-open 
hall of the old Mission house, that echoed 
strangely to-day with childish voices, and sil¬ 
very laughter, and flying little feet. 

Then the Angelus chimed from the old 
church steeple, and it was time for luncheon— 
and such a luncheon! The good pastors who 
were entertaining the lambs of their flock 
had determined there should be no stint to-day. 
There was a reckless lavishness that betrayed 
bachelor hosts unrestrained by parental ex¬ 
perience. Sandwiches of every known kind, 
biscuits, crackers, cakes, imlimited lemon fizz 
and ginger pop by the crate, pies, pickles, can¬ 
dies, peanuts and pop-corn, and, to crown all, 
ice-cream—ice-cream white and pink and brown 
and green and yellow; ice-cream that must 


THE "EXCURSION.” 


167 

have come by the barrel or hogshead, so ex¬ 
haustless seemed the supply; ice-cream that 
Brother Barry, with every kindly wrinkle on 
his old face beaming with delight, ladled out as 
liberally as if it were com-meal mush. “Pass 
up yer plates agin, childer; don’t be afeerd; 
there’s lashings of it. Here, ye poor little pale 
craythur there, have some more. Sure one 
plate of ice-cream is no more than a taste. 
Pink this time. Here it is, and good luck to 
ye, lad. Sick is it? ” disclaimed Brother Barry 
to the gentle remonstrance of a sanctuary lady 
when her small charge six years old began on 
his third plate. “Niver a bit of harrum will 
it do, miss. Sure what is it but milk for babes 
anyhow? Let the craythurs have their fill 
for wanst.” 

And it was with a sure if not settled convic¬ 
tion that their “fill’’ had been reached that the 
yotmg feasters heard the Mission bell calling 
them to the great oak to hear what new enter¬ 
tainment Father Felix had in store for them. 

He stood awaiting them with a touch of 
gravity in his smile that hushed the noisy 
laughter and shouts of the more hilarious and 
drew the attention of all. 


i68 


THE EXCURSIONr 


“ I have something to propose, my children, 
that will crown this beautiful day with the 
blessing of a good, holy, and happy deed. Five 
miles from this spot, which has been conse¬ 
crated to God’s service since the Catholic 
founders landed on this river-shore, there stands 
the wreck of what was once a happy home. 
Fifty years ago little children like you played 
among its groves and gardens, birds sang joy¬ 
fully in its trees, flowers bloomed about its 
wide porches; it was an earthly paradise where 
all was love and peace. But the shadow of sin 
fell upon the place—the sin that you are 
taught in your Catechism cries to Heaven for 
vengeance—wilful murder. I will not sadden 
your glad innocence by telling you the story, 
except to say that the horror that follows such 
a deadly crime fell upon the house, and has 
rested upon it ever since. Its owners left it 
to loneliness and desolation, no one could be 
found to buy, rent, or even live within the walls, 
that have stood during all these changing 
years the witnesses of sin and a terror to the 
ignorant and superstitious around them. Of 
late this terror has increased. Stories that 
to wiser ears sound wild and foolish are being 


THE EXCURSIONr 


169 


whispered about the neighborhood and, despite 
all the teachings of our holy Church, many of 
my poor simple colored people are returning to 
the forbidden customs of their race, and using 
charms, spells, and other fooleries to protect 
themselves from the evil spirits they fancy are 
haunting Pinecroft. This is wrong, as you all 
know, my dear children; and while we are not 
forbidden to believe that fallen spirits are 
sometimes permitted to show their diabolic 
malice on earth, such instances are rare and 
must be met by higher, holier powers than 
charms or spells. And so, since it is not fitting 
that these beautiful shores, consecrated to God 
by their first settlers, should have such a 
plague-spot of evil and darkness upon them, 
or that the curse of sin should rest as a terror 
and a blight in our midst, I propose that we go 
to-day, in our innocent gladness, to the old 
house, and by prayer and praise and the sol¬ 
emn blessing of the holy Church drive away 
the shadow of sin, and aught that may have 
followed that sin, forever. We will go in 
happy numbers, with song and music and sun¬ 
shine to brighten our way, that so we may 
scatter the darkness of ignorance and super- 


THE EXCURSIONr 


170 

stition that has gathered about the place, and 
show that the children of God have no fear of 
its terrors. And since it is something of a walk, 
I further propose that we take boats and go by 
the shorter and pleasanter way of the river. 
Now who goes with me?” 

The breathless silence was broken by a thun¬ 
dering chorus, and every boy’s hand went up 
in enthusiastic acceptance of the invitation. 
Even six-year-old Robby Waters, who had 
fallen asleep on a sanctuary lady’s lap, started 
up and, waving a small sticky hand, shouted, 
“I, I, father,” with the rest. 

There was just the touch of spice in this 
adventure the boys needed. Overfeasting 
might have made the afternoon hours a little 
dull, but the crowd was wide awake now to a 
boy. It is doubtful whether even Captain 
Jack Waters with the fighting blood of three 
generations in his veins, would have warmed 
up to Father Felix’s invitation after dark. 
But with the glad sunlight shimmering through 
the boughs, the birds singing, the band play¬ 
ing, and fifty boys brimful of fun and ice-cream 
along, even a trip to Pinecroft was in the nature 
of a “lark.” 


THE EXCURSIONr 


171 

It was decided that the ladies and the little 
ones should be left behind; but every boy over 
eight was soon scrambling gleefully down hill 
and cliff to the river, where Father Felix and 
Brother Barry stood to overlook this new 
“embarkation of the pilgrims,” while Dave saw 
that each of the ten rowboats was steered by 
a boy who knew how to hold a rudder. As for 
the oars, they made little difference; the river 
current would take the little flotilla swiftly 
enough down stream. 

One by one the boats started off, the band 
playing, the banners of the Sacred Heart and 
“Our Lady of Lourdes” floating on the breeze, 
the colors of the Kostka Cadets waving proudly 
beneath the silken Stars and Stripes they had 
won at the last competitive drill, the boys 
shouting and cheering lustily. 

It was a gay scene and one that doubtless 
carried its cheerful lesson to the score or more 
of humble watchers on the Mission wharf 
whom good Brother Barry had called to receive 
the crumbs of the feast. Uncle Pete was there, 
and Aunt Nance led by her granddaughter, 
and Soph and Phoebe and a dozen others. 

“Gwine ter Pinecroft,” was the breathless 


172 


THE excursion:' 


exclamation on every lip. “De scursion is 
gwine ter Pinecroft. Bress de Lord, some ob 
dem chillen will be gobbled up sure!’* 

“No, dey won’t, chile, dey won’t. Father 
Felix he gwine ter bless der groun’ ez he goes 
along. No h’ant ull ever set he foot dare 
again.” 

“ How many of dem chillen you say dey is? ” 
asked old Nance sharply. “Fifty of ’em? 
Fifty chillen I Lord, Lord! no debbil kin 
stand agin dat. Dey’ll scat away into der 
holes like skeert rats. Ef you wants to lay a 
ghost, dar ain’t no quicker way dan to bring a 
baby into de house. I’se ole nuss enough to 
know dat. Dar wa’n’t no libbing at Penrose 
Hall, for de h’ants, until young Marse Charlie 
was bom. De ole Gunnel wouldn’t res’ in his 
grave no how, alius was cantankerous, and 
folks said he was up looking for de leg he left at 
Gettysburg; kep’ cussing de Yankees to his 
las’ breaf for taking it off. Lord, Lord! de way 
de ole Gunnel used to stump roun’ dat house 
ob nights, shaking de fires and clinking de de¬ 
canters, was awful. Ebbery one knowed he 
was in torment, and whar was de good ob 
coming back to tell ’em ’bout it? But de berry 


THE EXCURSIONr 


173 


night little marse was bom he bu’st into de 
dining-room whar Uncle Ben was mixing toddy 
for de doctors, sent all de cut-glass tumblers 
a-smashing to de floor, and went up de chimney 
in a puff of smoke.” 

” Did Uncle Ben see him? ” queried a breath¬ 
less listener. 

“See him?” echoed Aunt Nance severely. 
“What sort of fool question is dat, chile? 
Who spects to see a h’ant? No, but he heem 
him, chile, heem de door bu’st open and de 
wooden leg stump ’cross de floor, an’ felt de 
cole wind dat comes wif a sperrit bresh by him, 
and he seen de glasses break and de smoke 
puff. An’ dat was de las’ ob de ole Gunnel at 
Penrose; he nebba troubled folks no more. 
Dat angel chile up in de cradle laid him tight 
and fas’. An’ dat’s what’s gwine ter happen 
to-day. Yes, chillen, you can do all de black- 
berrying you want at Pinecroft arter dis.” 

But old Seth took another view of matters. 
“One minute, my lads,” he said, stopping Cap¬ 
tain Jack and three of his cadets as they were 
hurrying by the target where he stood reload¬ 
ing his rifles. “I’ve nothing to say against 
singing and praying, boys, but I’ve hed a notion 


174 


THE EXCURSIONr 


fur some time that thar’s a good deal of solid 
flesh-and-bone rascality in them Pinecroft 
ghosts. I move that some of us men,'' and 
there was a twinkle in old Seth’s deep-set eyes 
at the word, “make up a scouting expedition 
through the woods and strike Pinecroft by a 
back way I happen to know. And these here 
Winchesters we’ve been playing with to-day 
might come in handy. Suppose we take them 
along and see?” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 

Wild with fear and rage, every nerve in his 
frail pampered body thrilling with the horror 
and shock of his capture, Lester had been borne 
off by Burridge to another room, that had evi¬ 
dently been prepared for him. Strong wooden 
bars had been nailed across the one window, 
that was heavily screened by the ivy growth 
of half a century; a mouldy rug was upon the 
damp, filthy floor; there was a broken chair, 
and a moth-eaten couch upon which Burridge 
rudely flung the struggling, shrieking boy. 

“ Shut up, you young fool! ” cried the Colonel, 
all his pleasant good-humor changed into surly 
ferocity. “Shut up or I will find a gag that 
will keep you quiet. We are not going to hurt 
you if you behave yourself; but”—with an 
oath—“if you keep up this racket I don’t say 

175 


176 THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 


what we will do, for this is no kid-glove game 
we are playing just now. We’ve been planning 
this deal too long to be squeamish or soft¬ 
hearted, you can count on that. You have 
altogether too much money for a kid of your 
age, and we want a share of it; so we are going 
to hold you imtil your mother pays our price 
for you.” 

“She will, she will,” cried Lester, grasping 
desperately at this straw of hope. “Oh, take 
me back to her and she will give you anything, 
anything! ” 

“That is what we are banking on,” was the 
grim reply. “You are gilt-edged stock, as we 
know; but as for taking you back until you are 
paid for full price, cash down on our own terms, 
that’s another story. So you may as well take 
it easy, young man, for here you are and here 
you stay until your mother pans out at our own 
figure.” 

“I won’t stay, I won’t! ” shrieked Lester 
frantically. “Let me go; you shall not keep 
me in this awful place. I tell you it will kill 
me; it will kill me.” And the young prince, 
whose simple whispered wish had hitherto been 
law to all arotmd him, sprang up from his 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 


177 


mouldy couch and grasped Burridge’s arm in 
fierce despair. 

“Look here, now,” said Burridge, shaking 
him roughly by the shoulder, “didn’t I tell you 
you’d better keep quiet? Another yell like 
that and down you go in the cellar with the 
rats—ay, and worse than rats. Maybe you 
don’t know where you are. Well, this old house 
is Pinecroft, and nobody has dared live here 
for fifty years, it’s so chock-full of devils and 
ghosts. You might scream yourself black in 
the face and no one would come near you. 
We’ve been screaming ourselves for the last 
week or so, just to keep every one well fright¬ 
ened off. And neither Danvers nor myself are 
angels, young man, so you had better not try 
our tempers.” And with this ominous bit of 
information Burridge flung the now almost 
speechless boy back on the couch, and turned 
from the room, slamming the door after him 
and slipping a heavy, creaking bolt into place 
with a sound that was to poor Lester the very 
crack of doom. 

“Oh, mamma, mamma, mamma! ” he wailed 
despairingly. 

But alas! the tender, idolatrous love that 


178 THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 


had shielded him from every rude breath and 
touch was powerless now. For the first time 
in all his thirteen years of life Lester called un¬ 
heard. And oh! the strange horror of the scene 
around him: the damp floor, slimy with the 
mould of years; the mildewed walls, black 
with heavy cobwebs; the great wide chimney, 
yawning like an open tomb! 

And this was Pinecroft, the Pinecroft of 
which the boys had told him, the Pinecroft of 
Uncle Pete’s gruesome story—the lonely, dark 
old house that with its ghosts and devils was 
the terror of the river-shore. And he was left 
here alone, perhaps to die! 

Lester started up among the ragged, musty 
cushions of his couch panting and trembling, a 
cold sweat of terror wetting his brow. Ah! 
the golden wand had indeed dropped from the 
hands of this fairy prince and left him only a 
wretched little crippled boy who knew not 
where to cry for help. For, though Lester had 
been taught to fold his hands and whisper a 
few words mechanically every morning and 
night, he had never learned to pray, to lift heart 
and voice to that Father in heaven who watches 
in love and tenderness over His children on 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 


179 


earth, and beg His blessing, His help. His care. 
“ Mamma ” had been all things to him. Mamma 
and the mighty millions that had bought him 
all earth could give until now. 

And now—now, in the madness of his terror 
and despair, he could only sit up wide-eyed and 
panting, his hand clutching at his throat, where 
the sobs and cries he dared not utter seemed 
choking him, his blood running cold in his veins. 

‘‘Oh, I am dying, dying! ” was his agonizing 
thought. “ Mamma said I would die if I had a 
shock. I am dying here alone! ” 

And what might have happened to the frail, 
delicate, terror-stricken boy we cannot say, 
but that just then through the ivy-meshed 
window there came a sound that made every 
strained nerve in his body thrill and tingle as 
if he had received an electric shock. 

Music! the full, joyous music of a band com¬ 
ing near, the brisk, merry rhythm of “March¬ 
ing through Georgia” pulsing blithely through 
the horrors around him, the glad murmur of 
many voices breaking through the awful silence 
and loneliness of this living tomb. 

Lester sprang to the window, forgetful of 
back and limbs and feet, feeling nothing in the 


i8o 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 


wild rush of hope that sent the blood coursing 
wildly through his chilled veins, while every 
nerve and muscle throbbed and thrilled with 
recovered life. “Help, help!” he cried, his 
feeble hands tearing at the heavy ivy that 
screened the window. “Help me!—here— 
here! I am shut in here.” The glass had long 
since vanished, but the knotted stems of the ivy 
had twisted and interlaced themselves about 
the opening in a way that defied poor Lester’s 
strength. 

He could only cling to the barred window- 
frame, peer through the leaves, and cry out 
with the recklessness of mingled hope and de¬ 
spair, while the music grew louder, the mur¬ 
mur of voices nearer and nearer, and through 
the trembling leaves he could see what seemed 
a very army of children marching towards the 
house. And then suddenly the glad music of the 
band softened into a gentler strain, and two- 
score young voices burst into sweet, solemn song. 

“Holy God, we praise Thy name 
Lord of all, we bow before Thee; 

All on earth Thy sceptre claim, 

All in heaven above adore Thee. 

Infinite Thy vast domain, 

Everlasting is Thy reign.” 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. i8i 

‘'Help, help!” Vainly the young million¬ 
aire’s feeble tones strove to break upon that 
full, beautiful harmony. Louder and sweeter 
swelled the hymn, while the fair ranks of youth 
and innocence came on through the shadows of 
pines and box hedge, up the weed-grown paths, 
their voices making echoes unheard for years 
in this sin-blighted spot. 

“ Hark! the loud celestial hymn 
Angel choirs above are raising, 

Cherubim and seraphim 
In unceasing chorus praising. 

Fill the heavens with sweet accord, 

Holy, holy, holy Lord.” 

“Help, help!” cried the desperate boy again 
from his ivy-veiled prison “Oh, they will 
pass and not hear me!” And as if the solemn 
appeal of the sweet singers without thrilled 
some waking chord in his soul, Lester fell on 
his knees and for the first time in his young life 
prayed indeed. 

“O God, my Father in heaven, help me, 
save me! Do not let them pass me by and 
leave me in this rvYvrLul place! Help, help! oh, 
help!” 

A wild rush of heavy footsteps soimded with- 


i 82 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 


out, and Burridge, pale with fear and fury, 
burst into the room. 

*‘Hush!” he cried, clapping his heavy hand 
on Lester’s mouth. “Another cry and I choke 
the life out of you. Down into the cellar you 
go until this here fool show passes by.” 

“Ah! would you, eh?” thundered a sten¬ 
torian voice at the open door behind them, and 
in a moment the “Colonel” went sprawling to 
the floor under a mighty blow from old Seth’s 
knotty fist, while Captain Jack and his comrade 
“presented arms” with unpleasant aim at the 
prostrate rascal’s head. “No use in showing 
flght, mister; the boys have the drop on you. 
We caught your two mates as they were bolting 
out the back way, not knowing that this ‘ light 
infantry’ had a rear-guard. Steady, boys; 
keep him covered with those shooting-irons 
while I tie him up.” 

And Lester! All things had swayed and 
blackened before him when the cruel hands of 
Burridge had caught his throat. He knew 
nothing more until he found himself splutter¬ 
ing and choking over a fiery draught from old 
Seth’s hunting-flask. He was out on the porch 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 183 

in the blessed sunshine, Father Felix holding 
his head, while Dick and Ted and Dave and 
thousands of other boys, so it seemed to his 
dazed eyes, were buzzing wildly around him. 

“Is he dead?” “No, no, he is coming to.’ 

“Who is he?” “What did they steal him 
for?” “The Kostka Cadets caught them all.” 
“Here’s the thing they played devil with,” 
and a huge, horned false face was tumbled out 
by a young explorer from its hiding-place in 
the hall. Toot, toot, toot! came the wailing 
notes of an old trombone, discovered by an¬ 
other. “Hear the ghosts crying, boys. Toot, 
toot, toot!” And the moan of Uncle Pete’s 
“lost sperrit” was lost in a chorus of boyish 
shouts and laughter. 

“Am I safe? am I safe?” cried Lester trem¬ 
ulously, bewildered by the bright, glad scene 
on which he had opened his eyes that had 
closed on such horror and despair. 

“Quite safe, my son,” said Father Felix 
soothingly. “There is nothing to make you 
tremble. Bring another cushion, Dick, and let 
the poor child rest here in the sunshine. You 
and Ted stay with him while I bless the house. 
Come, my children, you have all seen that the 


i84 the trappers TRAPPED. 


ghosts and devils of Pinecroft were but the 
tricks of evil men. God sent us here in time to 
avert a cruel wrong. Fling open the doors 
and windows and let in the sunshine, while 
with the prayers and blessing of our holy Church 
we banish the shadow of sin, the power of dark¬ 
ness, from Pinecroft forever.’' 

And so, except for the three villains, to 
whom was meted out just punishment of their 
crime, the Playwater Plot ended in gladness 
and sunshine, and blessing to all concerned; 
for, instead of dying from the terrible shock he 
had received, Lester began to get well from 
that hour. How and why it happened no one 
was wise enough to say, though Brother Barry 
had a theory of his own that the blessing of 
saintly martyred hands had cured the boy— 
for cured he was before the oaks on Playwater 
Farm had turned from green into gold, or the 
chestnuts rattled down on old Sweet as he 
foamed merrily as ever down the hill. 

Many and various were the learned explana¬ 
tions of this prodigy. Scientific pamphlets 
were written in French, English, and German, 
and medical societies discussed the young 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 185 

millionaire’s cure, in solemn session, while 
good Doctor Deane found himself suddenly 
famous. In vain the honest old doctor dis¬ 
claimed the unlooked-for honors thrust upon 
him, declaring his only treatment had been hot 
baths and sugar powders; his fortime as a 
specialist was made. 

In truth Mrs. Leonard, in the first fervor 
of her gratitude at Lester’s escape, had given 
the good old doctor and Mother Nature their 
way. All the luxurious paraphernalia that 
had surroimded Lester were discarded, all that 
could recall Victor and the past banished. 

With sturdy old Seth as guardian, Dick, 
Ted, and Dave as companions, Lester roamed 
the hills and forests and river, at first indeed 
astride his Shetland pony or seated in his 
pretty boat, but later on feet that, bared to 
the sun and breeze and stream, soon grew 
strong and light and active as Dick’s own. In 
her rapture at her darling’s restored health 
Mrs. Leonard bought one fourth of Playwater 
Farm, at a price which made Aunt Beth and 
Leigh independent of boarders forever. And 
on the terraced hill down which old Sweet tum¬ 
bled still in riotous welcome the yoimg million- 


THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 


186 

aire has his “home.” Stately mansions m 
town and by seashore are his, but it is to the 
quaint, simple cottage by the Playing Waters 
he comes to spend the gladdest months of all 
the year. Here old Seth is installed in com¬ 
fortable quarters as caretaker and guardian, 
and lame Dave has a boat-house by the river 
bank, where he rules supreme over launch and 
canoe. 

And here at Christmas there are such house- 
parties as keep old Bunner “buzzing” for the 
remainder of the year. 

“I was there, ma’am; yes, I was there,” he 
retails to Mrs. Reed as he fills the molasses-jug. 
“ I had to take up a whole wagon-load of stuff 
Mrs. Leonard ordered. Turkeys — I bought 
them all round the country—and geese the 
fattest I could find, to say nothing of chickens 
and eggs and garden-truck. Brings a pretty 
tidy sum to my pocket, I tell you. But I’d 
give it all up, ma’am, to see the show within. 
Prettiest Christmas picture you ever looked at. 
House all dressed in ivy and holly-berries; big 
fires blazing in all the chimneys; lamps every 
color of the rainbow, shining everywhere. 
And the girls and the boys—Lord, Lord, what 


777 E TRAPPERS TRAPPER 


187 


a time they was having, to be sure! Master 
Lester himself, straight as an arrow now in his 
soldier clothes—he goes to some military school 
so as to keep braced up; and young Dick 
Wade home from college—he is studying to be 
a doctor, and Miss Beth and Miss Leigh they 
do say are so set up about him they o^n’t talk 
of nothing else; and Ted—I must say that 
curly-haired boy is my favorite of all. As for 
the girls—wal, they were all pretty enough, 
but Lord, Lord! little Pat Jessup took the 
cake, she did indeed, ma’am. When she stood 
up with Dick Wade to dance, in her pretty 
white frock, with her cheeks like roses and her 
eyes like stars, there wasn’t a girl from city or 
country that could come near her. Yes, it was 
as pretty a sight as I ever seen, ma’am; even 
Brother Barry agreed to that. He and Father 
Felix stopped for a minute as they were going 
by in the sleigh to give the boys a welcouie 
home, he said. You know the Leonards are 
Catholics now; turned right after the boy was 
cured. And old Seth Bums, he is a regular 
professing member too. There’s something 
about Father Felix that sort of draws every¬ 
body. I tell you, ma’am, when Mrs. Leonard 


i88 THE TRAPPERS TRAPPED. 

asked him to give the young folks his Christ¬ 
mas blessing, and that good old man stood 
there in the ivy-wreathed doorway and lifted 
up his hands, though I’m a Baptist straight 
tlirough for three generations I went down on 
my knees with old Seth and the rest. Couldn’t 
help it, ma’am; and whatever you may say, 
I felt better for it. For blessings are sure to 
work somehow for good, as we all learned foin* 
years ago when Father Felix took them children 
to Pinecroft and broke up the Play water Plot.” 


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